



Copyrights WE 



CeSXRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 
"AGUECHEEK" 



MY 
UNKNOWN CHUM 

"AGUECHEEK" 



WITH A FOREWORD BY 

HENRY GARRITY 




NEW YORK 

THE DEVIN-ADAIR CO. 

1912 



A \ 




Copyright, 1912, by 
The Devin-Adair Company 



'feCI.A3l9621 



A perfect woman, nobly planned, 
To warn, to comfort, and command; 
And yet a spirit still and bright 
With something of an angel light. 



FOREWORD 

Life is too short for reading inferior books. 

Bryce. 

IN 1878 a letter of introduction to Mr. of 
Detroit was instrumental in securing for me the 
close friendship of a man some twenty years my 
senior— a man of unusual poise of mind and of such 
superb character that I have ever looked upon him 
as a perfect type of Newman's ideal gentleman. 

My new friend was fond of all that is best in art 
and literature. His pet possession, however, was an 
old book long out of print— "Aguecheek." He spoke 
to me of its classic charm and of the recurring plea- 
sure he found in reading and rereading the delightful 
pages of its unknown author, who saw in travel, in 
art, in literature, in life and humanity, much that 
other travellers and other writers and scholars had 
failed to observe— seeing all with a purity of vision, 
a clearness of intellect, and recording it with a grace 
and ease of phrase that suggest that he himself had 
perhaps been taught by the Angelic Doctor referred 
to in the closing lines of his last essay. 

A proffered loan of the book was eagerly accepted. 
Though still in my teens, I soon became a convert to 
all that my cultured friend had said in its praise. 

With the aid of a Murray Street dealer in old 



viii FOREWORD 

books, I was fortunate enough to get a copy for my- 
self. I read it again and again. Obliged to travel 
much, I was rarely without its companionship; for I 
knew that if other reading-matter proved uninter- 
esting, I could always find some new conversational 
charm in the views and words of the World-Con- 
versant Author. 

Fearing that I weighed the merits of the work 
with a mental scale wanting in balance, I asked 
others what they thought of it. Much to my sur- 
prise, they had never even heard of it. In fact, in 
these thirty-four years I have found but three per- 
sons who knew the book at all. Recently at The 
Players I asked Mr. Evert Jansen Wendell if he 
knew "Aguecheek." "Why," said he, "it was in my 
hands only yesterday. It is in my library — my dra- 
matic library." The late John E. Grote Higgens, 
President of the St. George Society, knew its inter- 
esting pages well; and it is, I am assured, a "prized 
unit" in the library of His Eminence Cardinal 
Farley. 

I lent my copy to young and old, to men and 
women of various professions and to friends in the 
world of commerce. The opinion of all might be 
summed up in the appreciation of a well-known Mon- 
signor— himself an observant traveller and an ardent 
lover of "real" literature. Returning the book, he 
said, "I have read it with the greatest of pleasure, 



FOREWORD ix 

and have turned to it often. I could read it a hun- 
dred times. It is a great book. Its fine humor, its 
depth, its simplicity and high ideals, commend it to 
all, especially the highly educated— the scholar." 

Charles B. Fairbanks is the reputed author, but 
the records show that he died in 1859, when but 
thirty-two years old— an age that the text repeatedly 
discredits. Whether written by Mr. Fairbanks or 
not, the modest author hid his identity in an obscure 
pen-name that he might thus be free to make his book 
"his heart in other men's hands." 

Some necessary changes have been made in the 
text. In offering the book to the public and in reluc- 
tantly changing the title, I am but following the 
insistent advice of friends— critics and scholars — 
whose judgment is superior to my own. No one 
seemed to know the meaning of "Aguecheek" 
(taken, no doubt, from a character in "Twelfth 
Night"), and few could even spell or pronounce 
the word; moreover, there is not the remotest con- 
nection between title and text. The old book has 
been the best of comrades, "the joy of my youth, the 
consolation of my riper years." If the new name 
lacks dignity as well as euphony, the reader will, I 
am sure, understand and appreciate the spirit of 
affection that inspired u My Unknown Chum." 

H. G. 

New York, July, 191 2. 



CONTENTS 



SKETCHES OF FOREIGN TRAVEL 



PAGE 



A Passage across the Atlantic 3 

London 19 

Antwerp and Brussels 33 

Genoa and Florence 45 

Ancient Rome 60 

Modern Rome 69 

Rome to Marseilles 81 

Marseilles, Lyons, and Aix in Savoy 94 

Aix to Paris 107 

Paris 122 

Paris— The Louvre and Art . . . ... . . .136 

Napoleon the Third 147 

The Philosophy of Foreign Travel 165 

Paris to Boulogne 179 

London 194 

xi 



xii CONTENTS 

ESSAYS 

PAGE 

Street Life 209 

Hard up in Paris 222 

The Old Corner 235 

Sacred to the Memory of Theatre Alley . . . 248 

The Old Cathedral 261 

The Philosophy of Suffering 275 

Boyhood and Boys 288 

Josephine— Girlhood and Girls 301 

Shakespeare and his Commentators 315 

Memorials of Mrs. Grundy 330 

The Philosophy of Life 343 

Behind the Scenes 354 

The Philosophy of Cant 366 



SKETCHES 
OF FOREIGN TRAVEL 



A PASSAGE ACROSS 
THE ATLANTIC 

TpO an American visiting Europe for the first 
X time," saith Geoffrey Crayon, "the long voy- 
age which he has to make is an excellent prepara- 
tive." To the greater proportion of those who 
revisit the old world, the voyage is only an interval 
of ennui and impatience. Not such is it to the writer 
of this sentence. For him the sea has charms which 
age cannot wither, nor head winds abate. For him 
the voyage is a retreat from the cares of business, a 
rest from the pursuit of wealth, and a prolonged re- 
miniscence of his youthful days, when he first trod 
the same restless pathway, and the glories of Eng- 
land and the Continent rose up resplendent before 
him, very much as the gorgeous city in the clouds 
looms up before the young gentleman in one of the 
late lamented Mr. Cole's pictures. For it is a satis- 
faction to him to remember that such things were,— 
even though the performances of life have not by 
any means equalled the promises of the programme 
of youth,— though age and the cares of an increasing 
family have stifled poetry, and the genius of Ro- 
mance has long since taken his hat. 

The recollections of youthful Mediterranean voy- 
ages are a mine of wealth to an old man. They have 
transformed ancient history into a majestic reality 
for him, and the pages of his dog's-eared Lempriere 

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MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

become instinct with life as he recalls those halcyon 
days when he reclined on deck beneath an awning, 
and gazed on Crete and Lesbos, and the mountains 
that look on Marathon. Neither age nor misfor- 
tune can ever rob him of the joy he feels when he 
looks back to the cloudless afternoon when he passed 
from the stormy Atlantic to that blue inland sea, — 
when he saw where Africa has so long striven to 
shake hands with Europe,— and thrilled at the 
thought that the sea then glowing with the hues of 
sunset was once ploughed by the invincible galleys of 
the Caesars, and dashed its angry surges over the 
shipwrecked Apostle of the Gentiles. 

It is rather a pleasant thing to report one's self on 
board a fine packet ship on a bright morning in May 
— the old portmanteau packed again, and thoughts 
turned seaward. There is a kind of inspiration in 
the song of the sailors at the windlass, (that is, as 
many of them as are able to maintain a perpendicular 
position at that early period of the voyage ;) the very 
clanking of the anchor chains seems to speak of 
speedy liberation, and the ship sways about as if 
yearning for the freedom of the open sea. At last 
the anchor is up, and the ship swings around, and soon 
is gliding down the channel ; and slowly the new gas- 
ometer, and Bunker Hill Monument, and the old 
gasometer (with the dome) on Beacon Hill, begin 
to diminish in size. (I might introduce a fine mis- 
quotation here about growing u small by degrees, and 
beautifully less," but that I don't like novelties in a 
correspondence like this.) The embankments of 
Fort Warren seem brighter and more verdurous than 
ever, and the dew-drops glitter in the sunbeams, as 

[4] 



A PASSAGE ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

dear Nellie's tears did, when she said good-by, that 
very morning. Then, as we get into the bay, the 
tocsin calls to lunch— and the appetite for lobsters, 
sardines, ale, and olives makes us all forget how 
much we fear lest business of immediate importance 
may prevent an early return to the festive mahogany. 
And shortly after, the pilot takes his leave, and with 
him the small knot of friends, who have gone as far 
as friendship, circumstances, and the tide will allow. 
And so the voyage commences — the captain takes 
command— and all feel that the jib-boom points to- 
wards Motherland, and begin to calculate the dis- 
tance, and anticipate the time when the ship shall be 
boarded by a blue-coated beef-eater, who will take 
her safely "round 'Oly'ead, and dock 'er." The day 
wears away, and the sunset finds the passengers well 
acquainted, and a healthy family feeling growing up 
among them. The next morning we greet the sea 
and skies, but not our mother earth. The breeze is 
light — the weather is fine — so that the breakfast is 
discussed before a full bench. Every body feels well, 
but sleepy, and the day is spent in conversation and 
enjoyment of the novelty of life at sea. The gentle 
heaving of the ocean is rather agreeable than other- 
wise, and the young ladies promenade the deck, and 
flatter themselves that they have (if I might use such 
an expression) their sea legs on. But the next day 
the gentle heaving has become a heavy swell,— loco- 
motion is attended with great difficulties,— the pro- 
cess of dressing is a severe practical joke, — and the 
timorous approach to the breakfast table and pre- 
cipitous retreat from it, are very interesting studies 
to a disinterested spectator. The dining-saloon is 

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MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

thinly populated when the bell rings— the gentlemen 
preferring to lounge about on deck— they have slight 
headaches — not seasick — of course not— the gentle- 
man who had taken eight sherry cobblers was not 
intoxicated at all — it was a glass of lemonade, that 
he took afterwards, that disagreed with him and 
made his footing rather unsteady. But Neptune is 
inexorable, and exacts his tribute, and the payers 
show their receipts in pale faces and dull eyes, 
whether they acknowledge it or no ; and many a poor 
victim curses the pernicious hour that ever saw him 
shipped, and comes to the Irishman's conclusion that 
the pleasantest part of going away from home is the 
getting back again. 

But a few days suffice to set all minds and stom- 
achs at rest, and we settle down into the ordinary 
routine of life at sea. The days glide by rapidly, as 
Shakspeare says, "with books, and work, and health- 
ful play," and as we take a retrospective view of the 
passage, it seems to be a maze of books, backgam- 
mon, bad jokes, cigars, crochet, cribbage, and con- 
versation. Contentment obtains absolute sway, 
which even ten days of head winds and calms cannot 
shake off. Perhaps this is owing in a great measure 
to the good temper and gentlemanly bearing of the 
captain, who never yielded to the temptation, before 
which so many intrepid mariners have fallen, to 
speak in disrespectful and condemnatory terms of 
the weather. How varied must be the qualities 
which make a good commander of a packet ship; 
what a model of patience he must be— patience not 
only with the winds, but also with variable elements 
of humanity which surround him. He must have a 

C 6 3 



A PASSAGE ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

good word for every body and a smiling face, al- 
though he knows that the ship will not head her 
course by four points of the compass on either tack; 
and must put aside with a jest the unconscious pro- 
fessional gentleman whose hat intervenes between 
his sextant and the horizon. In short, he must pos- 
sess in an eminent degree what Virgil calls the sua- 
viter in what's-his-name with the fortiter in what- 
d'ye-call-it. I am much disposed to think that had 
Job been a sea captain with a protracted head wind, 
the land of Uz would not have attained celebrity as 
the abode of the most patient of men. 

An eminent Boston divine, not long since deceased, 
who was noted alike for his Johnsonian style and his 
very un- Johnsonian meekness of manner, once said to 
a sea captain, "I have, sir, in the course of my profes- 
sional career, encountered many gentlemen of your 
calling; but I really must say that I have never been 
powerfully impressed in a moral way by them, for 
their conversation abounded in expressions savouring 
more of strength than of righteousness; indeed, but 
few of them seemed capable of enunciating the sim- 
plest sentence without prefacing it with a profane 
allusion to the possible ultimate fate of their visual 
organs, which I will not shock your fastidiousness by 
repeating." The profanity of seafaring men has 
always been remarked; it has been a staple article for 
the lamentations of the moralist and the jests of the 
immoralist ; but I must say that I am not greatly sur- 
prised at its prevalence, for when I have seen a 
thunder squall strike a ship at sea, and every effort 
was making to save the rent canvas, it has seemed to 
me as if those whose dealings were with the elements 

C 7 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

actually needed a stronger vocabulary than is re- 
quired for less sublime transactions. To speak in 
ordinary terms on such occasions would be as absurd 
as the Cockney's application of the epithets "clever" 
and "neat" to Niagara. I am not attempting to 
palliate every-day profanity, for I was brought up in 
the abhorrence of it, having been taken at an early 
age from the care of the lady u who ran to catch me 
when I fell, and kissed the place to make it well/' 
and placed in the country under the superintendence 
of a maiden aunt, who was very moral indeed, and 
who instilled her principles into my young heart with 
wonderful eloquence and power. "Andrew," she 
used to say to me, "you must n't laugh in meetin' ; 
I 've no doubt that the man who was hung last week 
(for this was in those unenlightened days when the 
punishment of crime was deemed a duty, and not a 
sin) began his wicked course by laughing in meetin'; 
and just think, if you were to commit a murder — for 
those who murder will steal— and those who steal 
will swear and lie — and those who swear and lie will 
drink rum— and then if they don't stop in their sinful 
ways, they get so bad that they will smoke cigars and 
break the Sabbath; and you know what becomes of 
'em then." 

The ordinary routine of life at sea, which is so irk- 
some to most people, has a wonderful charm for me. 
There is something about a well-manned ship that 
commands my deepest enthusiasm. Each day is 
filled with a quiet and satisfactory kind of enjoyment. 
From that early hour of the morning when the cap- 
tain turns out to see what is the prospect of the day, 
and to drink a mug of boiling coffee as strong as 

C 8 3 



A PASSAGE ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

aquafortis, and as black as the newly-opened fluid 
Day & Martin, from No. 97, High Holborn, to that 
quiet time in the evening when that responsible func- 
tionary goes below and turns in, with a sententious 
instruction to the officer of the watch to "wake him 
at twelve, if there 's any change in the weather," 
there is no moment that hangs heavy on my hands. 
I love the regular striking of the bells, reminding me 
every half hour how rapidly time and I are getting 
on. The regularity with which every thing goes on, 
from the early washing of the decks to the sweeping 
of the same at four bells in the evening, makes me 
think of those ancient monasteries in the south of 
Europe, where the unvarying round of duties creates 
a paradise which those who are subject to the unex- 
pected fluctuations of common life might be par- 
doned for coveting. If the rude voices that swell the 
boisterous chorus which hoists the tugging studding- 
sail up by three-feet pulls, only imperfectly remind 
one of the sounds he hears when the full choir of the 
monastery makes the grim arches of the chapel vi- 
brate with the solemn tones of the Gregorian chant, 
certainly the unbroken calmness of the morning 
watch may well be allowed to symbolize the rapt 
meditation and unspoken devotion which finds its 
home within the "studious cloister's pale" ; and I may 
be pardoned for comparing the close attention of the 
captain and his mates in getting the sun's altitude and 
working out the ship's position to the "examination 
of conscience" among the devout dwellers in the con- 
vent, and the working out of the spiritual reckoning 
which shows them how much they have varied from 
the course laid down on the divine chart, and how 

C93 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

far they are from the wished-for port of perfec- 
tion. 

I have a profound respect for the sea as a moral 
teacher. No man can be tossed about upon it with- 
out feeling his impotence and insignificance, and hav- 
ing his heart opened to the companions of his danger 
as it has never been opened before. The sea brings 
out the real character of every man; and those who 
journey over its u deep invisible paths" find them- 
selves intrusting their most sacred confidences to the 
keeping of comparative strangers. The convention- 
alities of society cannot thrive in a salt atmosphere ; 
and you shall be delighted to see how frank and 
agreeable the "world's people" can be when they are 
caught where the laws of fashion are silent, and what 
a wholesome neglect of personal appearances pre- 
vails among them when that sternest of democrats, 
Neptune, has placed them where they feel that it 
would be folly to try to produce an impression. The 
gentleman of the prize ring, whom Dickens intro- 
duces looking with admiration at the stately Mr. 
Dombey, gave it as his opinion that there was a way 
within the resources of science of "doubling-up" that 
incarnation of dignity; but, for the accomplishment 
of such an end, one good, pitching, head-sea would be 
far more effectual than all the resources of the 
"manly art." The most unbending assumption could 
not survive that dreadful sinking of the stomach, that 
convulsive clutch at the nearest object for support, 
and the faint, gurgling cry of "stew'rd" which an- 
nounces that the victim has found his natural level. 
A thorough novitiate of seasickness is as indispen- 

Do] 



A PASSAGE ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

sable, in my opinion, to the formation of true manly 
character, as the measles to a well-regulated child- 
hood. Mentally as well as corporeally, seasickness 
is a wonderful renovator. We are such victims of 
habit, so prone to run in a groove, (most of us in a 
groove that may well be called a 'Vicious circle,") 
that we need to be thoroughly shaken up, and made 
to take a new view of the rationale of our way of 
life. I do not believe that any man ever celebrated 
his recovery from that marine malady by eating the 
pickles and biscuit which always taste so good on 
such an occasion, without having acquired a new set 
of ideas, and being made generally wiser and better 
by his severe experience. I meet many unamiable 
persons "whene'er I take my walks abroad," who 
only need two days of seasickness to convert them 
into positive ornaments to society. 

But, pardon me; all this has little to do with the 
voyage to Liverpool. The days follow each other 
rapidly, and it begins to seem as if the voyage would 
stretch out to the crack of doom, for the head wind 
stands by us with the constancy of a sheriff, and when 
that lacks power to retard us we have a calm. But 
the weather is beautiful, and all the time is spent in 
the open air. Nut brown maids work worsted and 
crochet on the cooler side of the deck, and gentlemen 
in rusty suits, with untrimmed beards, wearing the 
"shadowy livery of the burning sun," talk of the 
prospects of a fair wind or read innumerous novels. 
The evenings are spent in gazing at a cloudless sky, 
and promenading in the moonshine. Music lends its 
aid and banishes impatience ; my young co-voyagers 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

seem not to have forgotten "Sweet Home," and the 
"Old Folks at Home" would be very much gratified 
to know how green their memory is kept. 

At length we all begin to grow tired of fair 
weather. The cloudless sky, the gorgeous sunrises 
and sunsets, and the bright blue sea, with its lazily 
spouting whales and its lively porpoises playing 
around our bows,— grow positively distasteful to us; 
and we begin to think that any change would be an 
agreeable one. We do not have to wait many days 
before we are awaked very early in the morning, by 
the throwing down of heavy cordage on deck, and 
the shouts of the sailors, and are soon aware that we 
are subject to an unusual motion— as if the ship were 
being propelled by a strong force over a corduroy 
road constructed on an enormous scale. Garments, 
which yesterday were content to hang in an orderly 
manner against the partitions of one's state-room, 
now obstinately persist in hanging at all sorts of 
peculiar and disgraceful angles. Hat boxes, trunks, 
and the other movables of the voyager manifest 
great hilarity at the change in the weather, and dance 
about the floor in a manner that must satisfy the most 
fastidious beholder. Every timber in the ship groans 
as if in pain. The omnipresent steward rushes about, 
closing up sky-lights and dead lights, and "chocking" 
his rattling crockery and glassware. On deck the 
change from the even keel and the clear sunlight of 
the day before is still more wonderful. The colour 
of the sky reminds you of the leaden lining of a tea- 
chest; that of the sea, of the dingy green paper 
which covers the same. The sails, which so many 
days of sunshine have bleached to a dazzling white- 



A PASSAGE ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

ness, are now all furled, except those which are neces- 
sary to keep some little headway on the ship. The 
captain has adorned his manly frame with a suit of 
India rubber, which certainly could not have been 
selected for its gracefulness, and has overshadowed 
his honest face with a sou'wester of stupendous pro- 
portions. With the exception of occasional visits to 
the sinking barometer, he spends his weary day on 
the wet deck, and tries to read the future in the 
blackening waves and stormy sky. The wheel, which 
heretofore has required but one man, now taxes the 
strength of two of the stoutest of our crew;— so hard 
is it to keep our bashful ship heading up to that rude 
sea, and to u ease her when she pitches." The break- 
fast suffers sadly from neglect, for every one is en- 
grossed with the care of the weather. At noon there 
is a lull for half an hour or so, and, in spite of the 
threats of the remorseless barometer, some of our 
company try to look for an amelioration in the 
meteorological line. But their hopes are crushed 
when they find that the wind has shifted one or two 
points, and has set in to blow more violently than 
before. The sea, too, begins to behave in a most 
capricious and disagreeable style. When the ship 
has, with a great deal of straining and cracking, 
ridden safely over two mighty ridges of water, and 
seems to be easily settling down into a black valley 
between two foam-capped hills, there comes a sud- 
den shock, as if she had met the Palisades of the 
Hudson in her path,— a crackling, grating sound, 
like that of a huge nutmeg-grater operating on a 
coral reef, a crash like the combined force of all the 
battering-rams of Titus Flavius Vespasianus on one 

Ci3] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

of the gates of Jerusalem, — and a hundred tons of 
angry water roll aft against the cabin doors, in a 
manner not at all agreeable to weak nerves. For a 
moment the ship seems to stand perfectly still, as if 
deliberating whether to go on or turn back; then, 
realizing that the ship that deliberates in such a time 
is lost, she rises gracefully over a huge pile of water 
which was threatening to submerge her. 

The afternoon wears away slowly with the passen- 
gers. They say but little to one another, but look 
about them from the security of the wheel-house as if 
they were oppressed with a sense of the inestimable 
value of strong cordage. As twilight approaches, 
and all hands are just engaged in taking supper, after 
having "mended the reefs," the ship meets a stag- 
gering sea, which seems to start every timber in her 
firm-set frame, and our main-top-gallant-mast breaks 
off like a stick of candy. Such things generally hap- 
pen just at night, the sailors say, when the difficulties 
of clearing away the broken rigging are increased by 
the darkness. Straightway the captain's big, manly 
voice is heard above the war-whoop of the gale, ring- 
ing out as Signor Badiali's was wont to in the third 
act of Ernani. The wind seems to pin the men to the 
ratlines as they clamber up ; but all the difficulties are 
overcome at length; the broken mast is lowered 
down, and snugly stowed away; and before nine 
o'clock all is quiet, except the howling wind, which 
seems to have determined to make a night of it. And 
such a night ! It is one of those times that make one 
want one's mother. There is little sleeping done 
except among the "watch below" in the forecastle, 
who snore away their four hours as if they appre- 



A PASSAGE ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

dated the reasoning of Mr. Dibdin when he extols 
the safety of the open sea as compared with the town 
with its falling chimneys and flying tiles, and com- 
miserates the condition of the unhappy shore-folks in 
such a tempestuous time. The thumping of the sea 
against our wooden walls, the swash of water on 
deck as the ship rolls and pitches as you would think 
it impossible for any thing addicted to the cold water 
movement to roll or pitch, and over all the wild, 
changeless, shrieking of the gale, will not suffer sleep 
to visit those who are not inured to such things. 
Tired of bracing up with knee, and hand, and heel, 
to keep in their berths, they lie and wonder how 
many such blows as that our good ship could endure, 
and think that if June gets up such gales on the 
North Atlantic, they have no wish to try the quality 
of those of January. 

Morning comes at last, and every heart is cheered 
by the captain's announcement, as he passes through 
the cabin, that the barometer is rising, and the 
weather has begun to improve. Some of the more 
hopeful and energetic of our company turn out and 
repair to the deck. The leaden clouds are broken 
up, and the sun trying to struggle through them ; but 
to the inexperienced the gale appears to be as severe 
as it was yesterday. All the discomfort and danger 
of the time are forgotten, however, in the fearful 
magnificence of the spectacle that surrounds us. As 
far as the eye can reach it seems like a confused field 
of battle, where snowy plumes and white flowing 
manes show where the shock of war is felt most 
severely. To watch the gathering of one of those 
mighty seas that so often work destruction with the 

D5II 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

noblest ships,— to see it gradually piling up until it 
seems to be impelled by a fury almost intelligent,— 
to be dazzled by its emerald flash when it erects its 
stormy head the highest, and breaks into a field of 
boiling foam, as if enraged at being unable to reach 
us;— these are things which are worth all the anxiety 
and peril that they cost. 

The captain's prognostications prove correct. 
Our appetites at dinner bear witness to them; and 
before sunset we find our ship (curtailed of its fair 
proportion, it is true, by the loss of its main-top-gal- 
lant-mast) is under full sail once more. The next 
day we have a few hours' calm, and when a light 
breeze does spring up, it comes from the old easterly 
quarter. It begins to seem as if we were fated to sail 
forever, and never get any where. But patience 
wears out even a head wind, and at last the long- 
looked-for change takes place. The wind slowly 
hauls to the south, and many are the looks taken at 
the compass to see how nearly the ship can come up 
to her course. Then our impatience is somewhat 
allayed by speaking a ship which has been out twelve 
days longer than our own — for, if it be true, as 
Rochefoucauld says, that "there is something not 
unpleasing to us in the misfortunes of our best 
friends,"— how keen must be the satisfaction of find- 
ing a stranger-companion in adversity. The wind, 
though steady, is not very strong, and many fears 
are expressed lest it should die away and give Eurus 
another three weeks' chance. But our forebodings 
are not realized, and a sunshiny day comes when we 
are all called up from dinner to see a long cloud-like 
affair, (very like a whale,) which, we are told, is the 

1*1 



A PASSAGE ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 

Old Head of Kinsale. Straightway all begin to talk 
of getting on shore the next day; but when that 
comes, we find that we are drawing towards Holy- 
head very rapidly, as our favourable wind has in- 
creased to a gale— so that when we have got round 
Holyhead, and have taken our pilot, (that burly 
visitor whose coming every one welcomes, and whose 
departure every one would speed,) the aforesaid 
pilot heaves the ship to, and, having a bed made up 
on the cabin floor, composes himself to sleep. The 
next morning finds the gale abated, and early in the 
forenoon we are running up to the mouth of the 
river. The smoke (that first premonitory symptom 
of an English town) hangs over Liverpool, and 
forms a strong contrast with the bright green fields 
and verdant hedges which deck the banks of the 
Mersey. The ship, after an immense amount of vocal 
power has been expended in that forcible diction 
which may be termed the marine vernacular, is got 
into dock, and in the afternoon a passage of thirty- 
three days is concluded by our stepping once more 
upon the ''inviolate island of the sage and free," and 
following our luggage up the pier, with a swing in 
our gait which any stage sailor would have viewed 
with envy. The examination at the Custom House 
is conducted with a politeness and despatch worthy of 
imitation among the officials of our Uncle Samuel. 
The party of passengers disperses itself about in va- 
rious hotels, without any circumstance to hinder their 
progress except falling in with an exhibition of Punch 
and Judy, which makes the company prolific in 
quotations from the sayings of Messrs. Codlin and 
Short, and at last the family which never had its 

D73 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

harmonious unity disturbed by any thing, is broken 
up forever. 

Liverpool wears its old thriving commercial look 
—perhaps it is a few shades darker with smoke. The 
posters are on a more magnificent scale, both as re- 
gards size and colour, than ever before, and tell not 
only of the night's amusements, but promise the ac- 
quisition of wealth outrunning the dreams of avarice 
in lands beyond the farthest Thule. Melbourne and 
Port Philip vie in the most gorgeous colours with 
San Francisco; and the United States seem to have 
spread wide their capacious arms to welcome the 
down-trodden Irishman. Liverpool seems to be the 
gate to all the rest of the world. I almost fear to 
walk about lest I should find myself starting off, in a 
moment of temporary insanity, for Greenland's icy 
mountains, or India's coral strand. 



D83 



LONDON 

DULL must he be of soul who could make the 
journey from Liverpool to the metropolis in 
the month of June, and not be lifted above himself 
by the surpassing loveliness of dear mother Nature. 
Even if he were chained to a ledger and cash book— 
if he never had a thought or wish beyond the brok- 
er's board, and his entire reading were the prices 
current— he must forget them all, and feel for the 
time what a miserable sham his life is— or he does 
not deserve the gift of sight. It is Thackeray, I 
think, who speaks somewhere of the "charming 
friendly English landscape that seems to shake hands 
with you as you pass along"— and any body who has 
seen it in June will say that this is hardly a figurative 
expression. I used to think that it was my enthusi- 
astic love for the land of the great Alfred which 
made it seem so beautiful to me when I was younger; 
but I find that it wears too well to be a mere fancy 
of my own brain. People may complain of the humid 
climate of England, and curse the umbrella which 
must accompany them whenever they walk out; but 
when the sun does shine, it shines upon a scene of 
beautiful fertility unequalled elsewhere in the world, 
and which the moist climate produces and preserves. 
And then, too, it seems doubly grateful to the eyes of 
one just come from sea. The bright freshness of 
the whole landscape, the varied tints of green, the 

Ci9] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

trim hedges, the luxuriant foliage which springs from 
the very trunks of the trees, and the high state of 
cultivation which makes the whole country look as if 
it had been swept and dusted that morning,— all 
these things strike an American, for he cannot help 
contrasting them with the parched fields of his own 
land in summer, surrounded by their rough fences 
and hastily piled-up stone walls. The solidity of the 
houses and cottages, which look as if they were built, 
not for an age, but for all time, makes him think of 
the country houses of America, which seem to have 
grown up in a night, like our friend Aladdin's, and 
whose frailty is so apparent that you cannot sneeze 
in one of them without apprehending a serious ca- 
lamity. Then the embankments of the railways 
present not only a pleasant sight to the eye of the 
traveller, but a pretty little hay crop to the corpora- 
tion ; and at every station, and bridge, and crossing, 
wherever there is a switch to be tended, you see the 
neat cottages of the keepers, and the gardens thereof 
—the railway companies having learned that the ex- 
penditure of a few hundred pounds in this way saves 
an expenditure of many thousands in surgeons' bills 
and damages, and is far more satisfactory to all con- 
cerned. 

What a charming sight is a cow— what a look of 
contentment she has— ambitious of nothing beyond 
the field of daily duty, and never looking happier 
than when she comes at night to yield a plenteousness 
of that fluid without which custards were an impos- 
sibility! Wordsworth says that "heaven lies about 
us in our infancy"— surely he must mean that portion 
of the heavens called by astronomers the Milky Way. 



LONDON 

It is pleasant to see a cow by the side of a railway- 
provided she is fenced from danger— to see her lift 
her head slowly as the train goes whizzing by, and 
gaze with those mild, tranquil eyes upon the noisy, 
smoke-puffing monster, — just as the saintly hermits 
of olden times might have looked from their serene 
heights of contemplation upon the dusty, bustling 
world. The taste of the English farmers for fine 
cattle is attested by a glance at any of their pastures. 
On every side you see the representatives of Alder- 
ney's bovine aristocracy; and scores of cattle crop 
the juicy grass, rivalling in their snowy whiteness any 
that ever reclined upon Clitumno's u mild declivity of 
hill," or admired their graceful horns in its clear 
waters. Until I saw them, I never comprehended 
what farmers meant when they spoke of "neat 
cattle." 

What an eloquent preacher is an old church-tower ! 
Moss-crowned and ivy-robed, it lifts its head, un- 
shaken by the tempests of centuries, as it did in the 
days when King John granted the Great Charter or 
the holy Edward ruled the realm, and tells of the 
ages when England was one in faith, and not a poor- 
house existed throughout the land. Like a faithful 
sentinel, it stands guard over the humbler edifices 
around it, and warns their inhabitants alike of their 
dangers and their duties by the music of its bells. 
Erect in silent dignity, it receives the first beams of 
the morning, and when twilight has begun to shroud 
every thing in its neighbourhood, the flash of sunset 
lingers on its gray summit. It looks down with sub- 
lime indifference upon the changing scene below, as if 
it would reproach the actors there with their forget- 

[21] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

fulness of the transitoriness of human pursuits, and 
remind them, by its unchangeableness, of the eternal 
years. 

At last we draw near London. A gentleman, 
whose age I would not attempt to guess,— for he was 
very carefully made up, and boasted a deportment 
which would have excited the envy of Mr. Turvey- 
drop, senior,— so far forgot his dignity as to lean 
forward and inform me that the place we were pass- 
ing was " 'Arrow on the '111," which made me forget 
for the moment both his appearance and his un- 
called-for "exasperation of the haitches." Not long 
after, I found myself issuing from the magnificent 
terminus of the North Western Railway, in Euston 
Square, in a cab marked V. R. 10,276. The cab and 
omnibus drivers of London are a distinct race of 
beings. Who can write their natural history? Who 
is competent to such a task? The researches of a 
Pritchard, a Pickering, a Smyth, would seem to 
cover the whole subject of the history of the human 
species from the anthropophagi andbosjesmen to the 
drinkers of train oil in the polar regions ; but the cab- 
men are not included. They would require a master 
mind. The subject would demand the patient in- 
vestigation of a Humboldt, the eloquence of a 
Macaulay, and the humour of a Dickens— and even 
then would fall short, I fear, of giving an adequate 
idea of them. Your London cab driver has no idea 
of distance; as, for instance, I ask one the simple 
question,— 

"How far is it to the Angel in Islington?" 

"Wot, sir?" a 

I repeat my interrogatory. 



LONDON 

"Oh, the Hangel, sir ! Four shillings." 

"No, no. I mean what distance." 

"Well, say three, then, sir." 

"But I mean— what distance ? How many miles ?" 

"O, come, sir, jump in— don't be 'ard on a fellow 
—I 'aven't 'ad a fare to-day. Call it 'arf a crown, 
sir." 

Leigh Hunt says somewhere that if there were 
such a thing as metamorphosis, Dr. Johnson would 
desire to be transformed into an omnibus, that he 
might go rolling along the streets whose very pave- 
ments were the objects of his ardent affection. And 
he was about right. What better place is there in 
this world to study human nature than an omnibus? 
All classes meet there; in the same coach you may 
see them all — from the poor workwoman to the gen- 
teelly dressed lady, who looks as if she disapproved 
of such conveyances, but must ride nevertheless— 
from the young sprig, who is constantly anxious lest 
some profane foot should dim the polish of his 
boots, to the urbane old gentleman, who regrets his 
corpulence, and would take less room if he could. 
And then the top of the omnibus, which usually car- 
ries four or more passengers, what a place is that to 
see the tide of life which flows unceasingly through 
the streets of London ! I know of nothing which can 
furnish more food for thought than a ride on an 
omnibus from Brompton to the Bank on a fine day. 
It is a pageant, in which all the wealth, pomp, power, 
and prosperity of this world pass before you ; and for 
a moral to the whirling scene, you must go to the 
nearest churchyard. 

London is ever the same. The omnibuses follow 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

each other as rapidly as ever up and down the 
Strand, the white-gloved, respectable-looking police- 
men walk about as deliberately, and the tail of the 
lion over the gate of Northumberland House sticks 
out as straight as ever. The only great change vis- 
ible here is in the newspapers. The tone of society 
is so different from what it was formerly, in all that 
concerns France, that the editors must experience 
considerable trouble in accustoming themselves to the 
new state of things. Once, France and Louis Na- 
poleon furnished Punch with his chief materials for 
satire and amusement, and if any of the larger and 
more dignified journals wished to let off a little ill 
humour, or to say any thing particularly bitter, they 
only had to dip their pens in Gaul; but times are 
changed, and now nothing can be said too strong in 
favour of "our chivalric allies, the French." The 
memory of St. Helena seems to have given place to 
what they call here the entente cordiale, which those 
who are acquainted with the French language assure 
me means an agreement by which one party contracts 
to "play second fiddle" to another, through fear that 
if he does not he will not be permitted to play at all. 
To the man who thoroughly appreciates the Es- 
says of Elia, and BoswelPs Life of Johnson, London 
can never grow tiresome. He can never turn a cor- 
ner without finding "something new, something to 
please, and something to instruct." Its very pave- 
ments are classical. And there is nothing to abate, 
nor detract from, such a man's enthusiasm. The 
traveller who visits the Roman Forum, or the Palace 
of the Caesars, experiences a sad check when he finds 
his progress impeded by unpoetical obstacles. But 



LONDON 

in London, all is harmonious ; he sees on every side, 
not only that which tells of present life and pros- 
perity, but the perennial glories of England's former 
days. Would he study history, he goes to the Tower, 
"rich with the spoils of time"; or to Whitehall, 
where mad fanaticism consummated its treasonable 
work with the murder of a sovereign; or to the tow- 
ering minster, to gaze upon the chair in which the 
monarchs of a thousand years have sat ; or to view 
the monuments, and read the epitaphs, of that host of 

"Bards, heroes, sages, side by side, 
Who darkened nations when they died." 

Is he a lover of English literature? Here are scenes 
eloquent of that goodly company of wits and 
worthies, whose glowing pages have been the delight 
of his youth and the consolation of his riper years ; 
here are the streets in which they walked, the taverns 
in which they feasted, the churches where they 
prayed, the tombs where they repose. 

And London wears well. To revisit it when age 
has sobered down the enthusiasm of youth, is not 
like seeing a theatre by daylight; but you think al- 
most that you have under-estimated your privileges. 
How well I remember the night when I first arrived 
in the metropolis! It was after ten o'clock, and I 
was much fatigued; but before I booked myself in 
my hotel, or looked at my room, I rushed out into 
the Strand, "with breathless speed, like a soul in 
chase." I pushed along, now turning to look at 
Temple Bar, now pausing to take breath as I went 
up Ludgate Hill. I saw St. Paul's and its dome be- 
fore me, and I was satisfied. No, I was not satis- 

£*3l 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

fied; for when I returned up Fleet Street, I looked 
out dear old Bolt Court, and entered its Johnsonian 
precincts with an awe and veneration which a devout 
Mussulman, taking the early train for Mecca, would 
gladly imitate. And then I posted down Inner Tem- 
ple Lane, and looked at the house in which Charles 
Lamb and his companions held their "Wednesday 
nights" ; and, going still farther, I saw the river— I 
stood on the bank of the Thames, and I was satis- 
fied. I looked, and all the associations of English 
history and literature which are connected with it 
filled my mind — but just as I was getting into a fine 
frenzy about it, a watchman hove in sight, and the 
old clock chimed out eleven. So I started on, and 
soon reached my hotel. I was accosted on my way 
thither by a young and gayly dressed lady, whom I 
did not remember ever to have seen before, but who 
expressed her satisfaction at meeting me, in the most 
cordial terms. I told her that I thought that it must 
be a mistake, and she responded with a laugh which 
very much shocked an elderly gentleman who was 
passing, who looked as if he might have been got up 
for the part of the uncle of the unhappy G. Barnwell. 
I have since learned that such mistakes and personal 
misapprehensions very frequently occur in London in 
the evening. 

Speaking of Temple Bar, it gratifies me to see that 
this venerable gateway still stands, "unshaken, un- 
seduced, unterrified, ,, by any of the recent attempts 
to effect its removal. The old battered and splashed 
doors are perhaps more unsightly than before; but 
the statues look down with the same benignity upon 
the crowd of cabs and omnibuses, and the never- 

[26] 



LONDON 

ending tide of humanity which flows beneath them, 
as they did upon the Rake's Progress, so many years 
ago. The sacrilegious commissioners of streets long 
to get at it with their crows and picks, but the shade 
of Dr. Johnson watches over the barrier of his 
earthly home. It is not an ornamental affair, to be 
sure, and it would be difficult for Mr. Choate, even, 
to defend it against the charge of being an obstruc- 
tion; but its associations with the literature and his- 
tory of the last two or three centuries ought to entitle 
its dingy arches to a certain degree of reverence, 
even in our progressive and irreverent age. The 
world would be a loser by the demolition of this an- 
cient landmark, and London, if it should lose this, 
though it might still be the metropolis of the British 
empire, would cease to be the London of Johnson 
and Goldsmith, of Addison and Pope, of Swift and 
Hogarth. 

Perhaps some may think, from what I have said 
in the commencement of this letter, that my enthusi- 
asm has blinded me to those great moral and social 
evils which are apparent in English civilization: but 
it is not so. I love England rather for what she has 
been than for what she is; I love the England of 
Alfred and St. Edward; and when I contrast the 
present state with what it might have been under a 
succession of such rulers, I cannot but grieve. Truly 
the court of St. James under Victoria is not what it 
was under Charles II., nor even under Mr. Thack- 
eray's favourite hero, "the great George IV.,"— but 
are not St. James and St. Giles farther apart than 
ever before? Is not Lazarus looked upon as a 
nuisance, which legislation ought, for decency's sake, 

C27 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

to put out of the way? What does England do for 
the poor? Nothing; absolutely nothing, if you ex- 
cept a system of workhouses, compared with which 
prisons are delightful residences, and which seems to 
have been intended more for the punishment of pov- 
erty than as a work of charity. No ; on the contrary, 
she discountenances works of charity; when a few 
earnest men among the clergy of her divided church 
make an effort in that direction, there is an outcry, 
and they must be put down ; and their bishops, whose 
annual incomes are larger than the whole treasury of 
Alfred, admonish them to beware how they thus 
imitate the superstitions of the middle ages. No; 
your Englishman of the present day has something 
better to do than to look after the beggar at his door- 
step; he is too respectable a man for that; he pays 
his "poor rates," and the police must order the thing 
of shreds and patches to "move on"; his progress 
must not be impeded, for his presence is required at 
a meeting of the friends of Poland, or of Italy, or of 
a society for the abolition of American slavery, and 
he has no time to waste on such common, every- 
day matters as the improvement of the miserable 
wretches who work his coal mines, or of those quar- 
ters of the town where vice parades its deformity 
with exulting pride, and the air is heavy with pesti- 
lence. There is proportionably more beggary in 
London at this hour than in any continental city. And 
such beggary! Not the comfortable, jolly-looking 
beggars you may see in Rome or Naples, who know 
that charity is enjoined upon the people as a religious 
duty, but the thin, pallid, high-cheeked supplicants, 
whose look is a petition which tells a more effective 

C28] 



LONDON 

story than words can frame of destitution and star- 
vation. 

But there is another phase of this part of London 
life, sadder by far than that of mere poverty. It is 
an evil which no attempt is made to prevent, and so 
great an evil that its very mention is forbidden by the 
spirit of this age of "superficial morality and skin- 
deep propriety." I pity the man who can walk 
through Regent Street or the Strand in the evening, 
unsaddened by what he shall see on every side. How 
ridiculous do our boasts of this Christian nineteenth 
century seem there ! Here is this mighty Anglo- 
Saxon race, which can build steam engines, and tele- 
graphs, and clipper ships, which tunnels mountains, 
and exerts an almost incredible mastery over the 
forces of nature, — and yet, when Magdalene looks 
up to it for a merciful hand to lift her from degrada- 
tion and sin, she finds it either deaf or powerless. 
There is a work yet to be done in London which 
would stagger a philanthropist, if he were gifted 
with thrice the heroism, and patience, and self-for- 
getfulness of a St. Vincent of Paul. 

I cannot resist the inclination to give in this con- 
nection a passage from the personal experience of a 
friend in London, which, had I read it in any book 
or newspaper, I should have hesitated to believe. 
One evening, as he was passing along Pall Mall, he 
was addressed by a young woman, who, when she 
saw that he was going to pass on and take no notice 
of her, ran before him, and said in a tone of the 
most pathetic earnestness,— 

"Well, if you'll not go with me, for God's sake, 
sir, give me a trifle to buy bread!" 

[29] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

Thus appealed to, and somewhat shaken by the 
voice and manner, he stopped under a gaslight, and 
looked at the speaker. Vice had not impressed its 
distinctive seal so strongly upon her as upon most of 
the unfortunate creatures one meets in London's 
streets ; indeed, there was a shade of melancholy on 
her face which harmonized well with her voice and 
manner. So my friend resolved to have a few words 
more with her, and buttoning up his coat, to protect 
his watch and purse, he told her that he feared she 
wanted money to buy gin rather than bread. She 
assured him that it was not so, but that she wished to 
buy food for her little child, a girl of two or three 
years. Then he asked how she could lead such a life, 
if she had a child growing up, upon whom her ex- 
ample would have such an influence; and she said 
that she would gladly take up with an honest occupa- 
tion, if she could find one, — indeed, she did try to 
earn enough for the daily wants of herself and child 
with her needle, but it was impossible,— and her only 
choice was between starvation and the street. At 
that time she said that she was learning the trade of 
a dressmaker, and she hoped that before long she 
should be able to keep herself above absolute neces- 
sity. Encouraged by a kind word from my friend, 
she went on in a simple, womanly manner, and told 
him of her whole career. It was the old story of 
plighted troth, betrayed affection, and flight from 
her village home, to escape the shame and reproach 
she would there be visited with. She arrived in Lon- 
don without money, without friends, without employ- 
ment,— without any thing save that natural womanly 
self-respect which had received such a severe blow: 

on 



LONDON 

—necessity stared her in the face, and she sank be- 
fore it. My friend was impressed by the recital of 
her misfortunes, and thinking that she must be sin- 
cere, he took a sovereign from his purse and gave it 
to her. She looked from the gift to the giver, and 
thanked him again and again. He continued his 
walk, but had not gone more than three or four rods, 
when she came running after him, and reiterated her 
expressions of thankfulness with a trembling voice. 
He then walked on, and crossed over to the front of 
the Church of St. Martin, (that glorious soldier who 
with his sword divided his cloak with the beggar,) 
when she came after him yet again, and seizing hold 
of his hand, she looked up at him with stream- 
ing eyes, and said, holding the sovereign in her 
hand,— 

"God bless you, sir, again and again for your kind- 
ness to me ! Pray pardon me, sir, for troubling you 
so much— but— but— perhaps you meant to give me a 
shilling, sir,— perhaps you don't know that you gave 
me a sovereign." 

How many models of propriety and respectability 
in every rank of life,— how many persons who have 
the technical language of religion constantly on their 
lips,— how many of those who, nurtured amid the 
influences of a good home, have never really known 
what temptation is, — how many such persons are 
there who might learn a startling lesson from this 
fallen woman, whom they seem to consider them- 
selves religiously bound to despise and neglect! I 
have a great dread of these severely virtuous people, 
who are so superior to all human frailty that they 
cannot afford a kind word to those who have not the 

DO 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

good fortune to be impeccable. But we all of us, I 
fear, need to be reminded of Burns's lines— 

"What's done we partly may compute, 
But know not what's resisted." 

If we thought of this, keeping our own weaknesses 
in view, which of us would not shrink from judging 
uncharitably, or casting the first stone at an erring 
fellow-creature? Which of us would dare to con- 
demn the poor girl who preserved so much of the 
spirit of honesty in her degradation, and to commend 
the negative virtues which make up so many of what 
the world calls good lives ? 



on 



ANTWERP AND BRUSSELS 

IT is a very pleasant thing to get one's passport 
vised (even though a pretty good fee is de- 
manded for it,) and to make preparations for leav- 
ing London, at almost any time ; but it is particularly 
so when the weather has been doing its worst for a 
fortnight, and the atmosphere is so "thick and slab" 
that to compare it to pea-soup would be doing that 
excellent compound a great injustice. It is very 
pleasant to think of getting out from under that 
blanket of smoke and fog, and escaping to a land 
where the sun shines occasionally, and where the 
manners of the people make a perpetual sunshine 
which renders you independent of the weather. If 
there ever was a day to which that expressive old 
Saxon epithet nasty might be justly applied, it was 
the one on which I left the greasy pavements of Lon- 
don, and (after a contest with a cabman, which 
ended, as such things generally do, in a compromise) 
found myself on board one of the fast-sailing packets 
of the General Steam Navigation Company, at St. 
Catharine's Wharf, just below the esplanade of the 
Tower. The beautiful banks of the river below the 
city, the fine pile of buildings, and the rich foliage of 
the park at Greenwich, seemed to have laid aside 
their charms, and shrouded themselves in mourning 
for the death of sunshine. The steamer was larger 
than most of those which ply in the Channel ; but the 

C333 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

crowded cabins and diminutive state-rooms made me 
think with envy of the passengers from New York to 
Fall River that afternoon. And there was a want 
of attention to those details which would have im- 
proved the appearance of the boat greatly— which 
made me wish that her commander might have 
served his apprenticeship on Long Island Sound or 
on the Hudson. 

The company was composed of about the usual 
admixture of English and foreign beauty and manli- 
ness; and the English, French, Dutch, and German 
languages were confounded in such a manner as to 
bring to mind the doings of the committee on the 
construction of public works recorded in Genesis. 
Among the crowd of young Cockneys in jockeyish- 
looking caps, with travelling pouches strapped to 
their sides, there was a rather tall gentleman in a 
clerical suit, with his throat covered with the usual 
white bandages. His highly respectable look, and 
the eminently "evangelical" expression of the cor- 
ners of his mouth, made me feel quite sure that I had 
found a character. He had three little boys with 
him ; and as far as appearance went, he might have 
been Dickens's model for Dr. Blimber, (the prin- 
cipal of that celebrated academy where they had 
mental green peas and intellectual asparagus all the 
year round,) for he had the eye of a pedagogue "to 
threaten and command," and his fixed look was the 
one which my old schoolmaster's face wore when he 
turned up his wristbands, and, taking his ruler, said, 
"I am very sorry, Andrew; but you know that it is 
for your good." His conversation savoured so 
strongly of the dictionary, that, even if I had been 

C343 



ANTWERP AND BRUSSELS 

blind, I should have said that the speaker had spent 
years in correcting the compositions of ingenuous 
youth. I shall not forget his look of wonder when 
he asked one of the engineers what was the matter 
with a dog that was yelping about the deck, and re- 
ceived for a reply that he tumbled off the quarter 
deck, and was strained in the garret. However, I 
enjoyed two or three hours' conversation with him 
very much— if it could be called conversation when 
he did all the talking. 

Towards evening, when we found ourselves in the 
open sea, the south-westerly swell rolled up finely 
from the Goodwin Sands, and produced a scene to 
remind a disinterested spectator of Punch's touching 
pictorial representation of the commencement of the 
continental tour of Messrs. Brown, Jones, and Rob- 
inson. I soon perceived that a conspicuous collec- 
tion of white bowls, which adorned the main saloon, 
was not a mere matter of ornament. The amount of 
medicine for the prevention or cure of seasickness, 
which was taken by my fellow-voyagers from flat 
bottles covered with wicker-work, would have aston- 
ished the most ardent upholder of the old allopathic 
practice. But all the pitching and rolling of the 
steamer, and the varied occupations of the passen- 
gers, did not interfere with my repose. I slept as 
soundly in my narrow accommodations as if I had 
been within hearing of the rattling of the omnibuses 
of my native city. 

The next morning I was out in good season; and 
though I do not consider myself either "remote," 
"unfriended," "melancholy," or "slow," I found my- 
self upon the "lazy Scheldt," with Antwerp's heaven- 
ly;] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

kissing spire climbing up the hazy perspective. The 
banks of the Scheldt are not very picturesque; in- 
deed, a person of the strongest poetical susceptibil- 
ities might approach Flanders without the slightest 
apprehension of an attack of his weakness. I could 
not help congratulating myself, though, on having 
been spared to see the country which was immortal- 
ized by the profanity of a great military force. 

We Americans usually consider ourselves up to the 
times, and are prone to sneer at Russia for being 
eleven days behind the age; but we do not yet "beat 
the Dutch" in progress, for they are half an hour in 
advance, as I found, very soon after landing, that all 
the church clocks, with a great deal of formality and 
precision, struck nine, when the hands only pointed 
to half past eight ; and I noted a similar phenomenon 
while I was taking breakfast an hour after. Antwerp 
is a beautiful old city, and its quiet streets are very 
pleasant, after the tumult and roar of London; but— 
there is one drawback — it is too scrupulously clean. 
I almost feared to walk about, lest I should unknow- 
ingly do some damage; and every door-handle and 
bell-pull had a most unhospitable polish, which 
seemed to say with the placards in the Crystal 
Palace, "Please not to handle." Cleanliness is a 
great virtue ; but when it is carried to such an extent 
that you cannot find your books and papers which 
you left carefully arranged yesterday on your table, 
—when it gets to be a monomania with man or 
woman,— it becomes a bore. How strangely the 
first two or three hours in a Dutch town strike a 
stranger!— the odd, high-gabled houses, the queer 
head-dresses, (graceful because of their very un- 

D6] 



ANTWERP AND BRUSSELS 

gracefulness,) the wooden shoes, and the language, 
which sounds like English spoken by a toothless per- 
son. But one very soon gets accustomed to it. It is 
like being in an Oriental city, where the great variety 
of costumes and languages, and the different manners 
of the people, make up an ensemble which a stranger 
thinks will be a lasting novelty; but on his second day 
he finds himself taking about as much notice of a 
Persian caravan as he would of a Canton Street or 
Sixth Avenue omnibus. 

I might here indulge in a little harmless enthu- 
siasm about this grand old cathedral of Antwerp. I 
might talk about the "long-drawn aisle and fretted 
vault," and give an elaborate description of it,— its 
enormous dimensions and artistic glories, — if I did 
not know that any reader who desires such things can 
find them set down with greater exactness than be- 
comes me, in any of the guide books for Belgium. I 
spent the greater proportion of my waking hours in 
Antwerp under the solemn arches of that majestic 
old church. I wonder, shall we ever see any thing in 
America to remind us even faintly of the glories of 
Antwerp, Cologne, Rouen, Amiens, York, or Milan? 
I fear not. The ages that built those glorious piles 
thought less of fat dividends than this boastful nine- 
teenth century of ours, and their religion was not the 
mere one-day-out-ofrseven affair that the improved 
Christianity of to-day is. The architects who con- 
ceived and executed those marvels of sublimity never 
troubled themselves with our popular query, "Will it 
pay?" any more than Dante interrupted the inspi- 
ration of his Paradiso, or Beethoven the linked 
harmony of his matchless symphonies, with their 

C373 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

solicitude about the amount of their copyright. No ; 
their work inspired them, and while it reflected their 
genius, it imparted to them something of its own 
divine dignity. Their art became religion, and its 
laborious processes acts of the most fervent devo- 
tion. But we have reformed all that, and now inspi- 
ration has to give way to considerations of the 
greatest number of "sittings," that can possibly be 
provided, and if the expenses of the sacred enterprise 
can be lessened by contriving accommodation for 
shops or storage in the basement, who does not re- 
joice? There are too many churches nowadays built 
upon the foundation of the profits, leaving the apos- 
tles entirely out of the question. 

But while I lament our want of those wonderful 
constructions whose very stones seem to have grown 
consciously into forms of beauty, I must record my 
satisfaction at the improvement in architectural taste 
which is visible in most of our cities at home. If we 
must have banks, and railway stations, and shops, it 
is some compensation to have them made pleasant to 
our sight. Buildings are the books that every body 
unconsciously reads; and if they are a libel on the 
laws of architecture, they will surely vitiate in time 
the taste of those who become familiarized to their 
deformity. Dr. Johnson said, that "if a man's 
hands were dirty, his thoughts would be dirty" ; and 
it may be declared, with much more reason, that 
those who are obliged to look, day after day, at 
ungraceful, mean, and unsubstantial objects, lose, by 
degrees, their sense of the beautiful and the har- 
monious, and set forth, in the poverty of their minds, 
the meanness of their surroundings. 

C38] 



ANTWERP AND BRUSSELS 

On one account I have again and again blessed the 
star that guided me to Antwerp,— that is, for the 
pleasure afforded me by its treasures of art. I have, 
in times past, fed fat my appetite for the beautiful in 
the galleries of Italy, and therefore counted but little 
on the contents of the museum and churches of this 
ancient city. Do not be frightened, beloved reader; 
I am not going to launch out into the muddy stream 
of artistic criticism. I despise most of that which 
passes current under that dignified name, as heartily 
as you do. Even the laurels of Mr. Ruskin cannot 
rob me of a moment's repose. I cannot if I would, 
nor would I if I could, talk learnedly about pictures. 
So I can safely promise not to bore you with any 
"breadth of colouring," and to keep very "shady" 
about chiaro y scuro. I only wish to say that he who 
has never been in Antwerp does not know who 
Rubens was. He may know that an industrious 
painter of that name once lived, and painted (as I 
used to think, judging from most of his works that I 
had seen elsewhere) a variety of fat, flaxen-haired 
women; but of Rubens, the great master, the painter 
of the Crucifixion, and the Descent from the Cross, 
he is as ignorant as a fourth-form boy in the public 
schools of Patagonia. It is worth a month of sea- 
sick voyaging to see the works of Rubens and Van- 
dyck which Antwerp possesses ; and the only regret 
connected with my visit there has been, that I could 
not give more days to the study of them than I could 
hours. 

It is but fifteen miles from Antwerp to Mechlin, 
or Malines, (as the people here, in the depths of 
their ignorance, insist upon calling it,) and as a rep- 

[39] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

resentative of a nation whose sole criterion is suc- 
cess, and whose list of the cardinal virtues is headed 
by Prosperity, I felt that it would be a grievous sin 
of omission for me not to stop and visit that thriving 
old town. It did not require much time to walk 
through its nice, quiet streets, and look at the pic- 
tures and wood carvings in its venerable churches. 
The white-capped and bright-eyed lace-makers sat in 
windows and doorways, their busy fingers forming 
fabrics, the sight of which would kindle the fire of 
covetousness in any female heart. Three hours in 
Mechlin sufficed to make me about as well acquainted 
with it as if I had daily waked up its echoes with the 
creaking of my shoes, until their thick soles were 
worn out past all hope of tapping. Selecting one of 
the numerous railways that branch out from Mech- 
lin, like the reins from the hand of a popular circus 
rider in his favourite "six-horse-act," the "Courier 
of St. Petersburg," I took a ticket for Brussels, and 
soon found myself spinning along over these fertile 
plains, whose joyous verdure I had not sufficient time 
to appreciate before I found myself in the capital of 
Belgium. 

And what a charming place this city of lace and 
carpets is ! Clean as a parlour, not a speck nor a stain 
to be seen any where, with less of Dutch stiffness 
and more of French ease, so that you do not feel so 
much like an intruder as in most other strange cities. 
Brussels is a kind of vestibule to Paris; its streets, its 
shops, its public edifices are all reflections in minia- 
ture of those of the French metropolis. It has long 
seemed to me so natural a preparation for the 
meridian splendours of Paris, that to go thither in 

[40 3 






ANTWERP AND BRUSSELS 

any other way than through Brussels, is as if you 
should enter a saloon by a back window, rather than 
through the legitimate front door. In one respect I 
prefer Brussels to Paris; it is smaller, and your mind 
takes it all in at once. In the French capital, its very 
vastness bewilders you. You are in the condition of 
the gentleman whose wife was so fat that when he 
wished to embrace her, he was obliged to make two 
actions of the feat, and use a bit of chalk to insure 
the proper distribution of his caress. But in Brussels 
every thing is so harmoniously and compactly com- 
bined, that you can enjoy it all at once. How does 
one's mind treasure up .his rambles through these fair 
streets and gay arcades, his leisurely walks on these 
spacious boulevards, or under the dense shade of this 
lovely park, his musings in this fine old church of Ste. 
Gudule, whose gorgeous windows symbolize the 
heavenly bow, and whose air of devotion is eloquent 
of the undying hope which abides within its conse- 
crated precincts ! How one looks back years after 
leaving Brussels, and conjures up, in his memory, its 
public monuments, from that exceedingly diminutive 
and peculiar statue near the Hotel de Ville, which 
has pursued its useful and ornamental career for so 
many centuries, to the heroic equestrian figure of 
Godfrey of Bouillon, in the Place Royale! How 
vividly does one remember the old Gothic hall, 
which has remained unchanged during the many 
years that have passed since the Emperor Charles V. 
there laid down the burden of his power, and ex- 
changed the throne for the cloister. 

One of the most delightful recollections of my 
term of residence in Brussels, is of a bright summer 

[4i] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

day, when I made an excursion to the field of Water- 
loo. Some Englishmen have established a line of 
coaches for the purpose— real old fashioned coaches, 
with a driver and a guard, which latter functionary 
performed Yankee Doodle most admirably on his 
melodious horn as we rattled out of town. The 
roadside views cannot have changed much since the 
night when the pavement shook beneath the heavy 
artillery and thundering tramp of Wellington's 
army. The forest of Soignies (or, to use its poetical 
name, Arden) looked as it might have looked before 
it was immortalized by a Tacitus and a Shakspeare ; 
and its fresh foliage was "dewy with Nature's tear- 
drops," over our two coach loads of pleasure-seek- 
ers, just as Byron describes it to have been over the 
"unreturning brave," who passed beneath it forty 
years ago. Our party was shown over the memo- 
rable field by an old English sergeant who was in the 
battle ; a fine bluff old fellow, and a gentleman withal, 
who, though his head was white, had all the enthu- 
siasm of a young soldier. It was the most interest- 
ing trip of the kind that I ever made, far surpassing 
my expectations, for the ground remains literally in 
statu quo ante helium. No commissioners of high- 
ways have interfered with its historical boundaries. 
It remains, for the most part, under cultivation, as it 
was before it became famous, and the grain grows, 
perhaps, more luxuriantly for the chivalric blood 
once shed there. There they are, unchanged, those 
localities which seem to so many mere inventions of 
the historian, Mont St. Jean, the farm of La Haye 
Sainte, the chateau of Hougoumont, the orchard 
with its low brick wall, over which the chosen troops 

C42] 



ANTWERP AND BRUSSELS 

of France and England fought hand to hand, and the 
spot where the last great charge was made, and the 
spell which held Europe in awe of the name of Na- 
poleon, and made that name his country's watch- 
word, and the synonyme of victory, was broken 
forever. Perhaps I err in saying forever, for France 
is certainly not unmindful of that name even now. 
That showery afternoon, when the great conqueror 
saw his veterans, against whom scores of battle 
fields, and all the terrors of a Russian campaign, 
proved powerless, cut to pieces and dispersed by a 
superior force, to which the news of coming rein- 
forcements gave new. strength and courage,— that 
very afternoon a boy, without a thought of battles or 
their consequences, was playing in the quiet grounds 
of the chateau of Malmaison. If Napoleon could 
have looked forward forty years, if he could have 
foreseen the romantic career of that child, and 
followed him through thirty years of exile, imprison- 
ment, and discouragement, until he saw him reestab- 
lish the empire which was then overthrown, and 
place France on a higher pinnacle of power than she 
ever knew before, how comparatively insignificant 
would have seemed to him the consequences of that 
last desperate charge ! If he could have seen that it 
was reserved to his nephew, the grandchild of his 
divorced but faithful Josephine, to avenge Waterloo 
by an alliance more fatal to England's prestige than 
any invasion could be, and that the armies which had 
that day borne such bloody witness to their uncon- 
querable daring, would forty years later be united to 
resist the encroachments of the power which first 
checked him in his career of victory, he would have 

C43] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

had something to think of during that gloomy night 
besides the sad events that had wrought such a fear- 
ful change in his condition. 

I returned to Brussels in the afternoon, meditating 
on the scenes I had visited, and repeating the five 
stanzas of Childe Harold in which Byron has com- 
memorated the battle of Waterloo. In the evening 
I read, with new pleasure, Thackeray's graphic 
Waterloo chapter in Vanity Fair, and dreamed all 
night of falling empires and "garments rolled in 
blood." And now I turn my face towards Italy. 



C443 



GENOA AND FLORENCE 

IT is a happy day in every one's life when he com- 
mences his journey into Italy. That glorious 
land, "rich with the spoils of time" above all others, 
endeared to every heart possessing any sense of the 
beautiful in poetry and art, or of the heroic in his- 
tory, rises up before him as it was wont to do in the 
days of his youth, when Childe Harold's glowing 
numbers gave a tone of enthusiasm to his every 
thought, and filled him with longings, for the realiza- 
tion of which he hardly dared to hope. For the 
time, the commonest actions of the traveller seem to 
catch something of the indescribable charm of the 
land to which he is journeying. The ticketing of 
luggage and the securing of a berth on board a 
steamer — occupations which are not ordinarily con- 
sidered particularly agreeable— become invested with 
an attractiveness that makes him wonder how he 
could ever have found them irksome. If he ap- 
proaches Italy by land from France or Switzerland, 
with what curiosity does he study the varied features 
of the Piedmontese landscape! He recognizes the 
fertile fields which he read about in Tacitus years 
ago, and endeavours to find in the strange dialect 
which he hears spoken in the brief stops of the dili- 
gence to change horses, something to remind him 
even faintly of the melodious tongue with whose ac- 

C45] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

cents Grisi and Bosio had long since made him fa- 
miliar. Meanwhile his imagination is not idle, and his 
mind is filled with historical pictures drawn from the 
classical pages which he once found any thing but 
entertaining. Though he may be fresh from the 
cloudless atmosphere of fair Provence, he fancies 
that the sky is bluer and the air more pure than he 
ever saw before. 

It is a great advantage to enter Italy from the 
sea. In this way you perceive more clearly the na- 
tional characteristics, and enter at once into the 
Italian way of life. You avoid in this way that 
gradual change from one pure nationality to another, 
which is eminently unsatisfactory. You do not weary 
yourself with the mixed population and customs of 
those border towns which bear about the same rela- 
tion to Italy that Boulogne, with its multitude of 
English residents, bears to France. It was my good 
fortune when I first visited Italy, years ago, to make 
the voyage from America direct to the proud city of 
Genoa. Fifty-five weary days passed away before 
the end of the voyage was reached. Twenty-six of 
those days were spent in battling with a terrible 
north-easter, before whose might many a better craft 
than the one I was in went down into the insatiable 
depths. My Italian anticipations kept me up through 
all the cheerlessness of that time. The stormy sky, 
the wet, the cold, and all the discomfort could not 
keep from my mind's eye the vineyards, palaces, 
churches, and majestic ruins which made up the Italy 
I had looked forward to from childhood. My first 
sight of that romantic land did somewhat shock, I 
must acknowledge, my preconceived notions. I was 

C46.3 



GENOA AND FLORENCE 

called on deck early one December morning to see 
the land which is associated in most minds with per- 
petual sunshine. Facing a biting, northerly blast, I 
saw the maritime range of the Alps covered with 
snow and looking as relentless as arctic icebergs. My 
disappointment was forgotten, however, two morn- 
ings after, when Genoa, wearing "the beauty of the 
morning,' , lay before our weather-beaten bark. It 
was something to remember to my dying day— that 
approach to the city of palaces. Surrounded by its 
amphitheatre of hills crested on every side with 
heavy fortifications, its palaces, and towers, and 
domes, and terraced gardens rising apparently from 
the very edge of that tideless sea, there sat Genoa, 
surpassing in its splendour the wildest imaginings of 
my youth. I shall never forget the thrill that ran 
through every fibre of my frame, when the sun rose 
above those embattled ridges, and poured his flood 
of saffron glory over the whole wonderful scene, 
and the bells from a hundred churches and convents 
rang out as cheerily as if the sunbeams made them 
musical, like the statue in the ancient fable, and there 
was no further need of bell ropes. The astonish- 
ment of Aladdin when he rubbed the lamp and saw 
the effects of that operation could not have equalled 
mine, when I saw Genoa put on the light and life of 
day like a garment. It was like a scene in a the- 
atrical pageant, or one of the brilliant changes in a 
great firework, so instantaneous was the transition 
from the subdued light and calmness of early morn- 
ing to the activity and golden light of day. All the 
discomfort of the eight preceding weeks was for- 
gotten in the exultation of that moment. I had 

C47 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

found the Italy of my young dreams, and my happi- 
ness was complete. 

This time, however, I entered Italy from the 
north. I pass by clean, prosperous-looking Milan, 
with its elegant churches, and its white-coated Aus- 
trian soldiers standing guard in every public place. 
I have not a word of lament to utter at seeing a 
stranger force sustaining social order there. It is 
better that it should be sustained by a despotism far 
more cruel than that of Austria, than to become the 
prey of that sanguinary anarchy which is dignified in 
Europe with the name of republicanism. The most 
absolute of all absolute monarchies is to be preferred 
to the best government that could possibly be built 
upon such a foundation as Mazzini's stiletto. Far 
better is the severest military despotism than the irre- 
sponsible tyranny of those who deny the first prin- 
ciples of government and common morality, and who 
seem to consider assassination the chief of virtues 
and the most heroic of actions. I pass by that mag- 
nificent cathedral, with its thousands of pinnacles and 
shining statues piercing the clear atmosphere like the 
peaks of a stupendous iceberg, and its subterranean 
chapel, glittering with precious metals and jewels, 
where, in a crystal shrine, repose the relics of the 
great St. Charles, and the lamps of gold and silver 
burn unceasingly, and symbolize the shining virtues of 
the self-forgetful successor of St. Ambrose, and the 
glowing gratitude of the faithful Milanese for his 
devotion to the welfare of their forefathers. 

I lingered among the attractions of Genoa for a 
few days. I enjoy not only those magnificent palaces 
with their spacious quadrangles, broad staircases, 

C4S3 



GENOA AND FLORENCE 

and sculptured fagades, but those narrow, winding 
streets of which three quarters of the city are com- 
posed — so narrow indeed that a carriage never is 
seen in them, and a donkey, pannier-laden, after the 
manner of Ali Baba's faithful animal, compels you to 
keep very close to the buildings. Genoa is the very 
reverse of Philadelphia. Its streets are as narrow 
and crooked as those of Philadelphia are broad and 
straight. The Quaker City was always a wearisome 
place to me. Its rectangular avenues— so wide that 
they afford no protection from the wintry blast nor 
shelter from the canicular sunshine, and as intermin- 
able as a tale in a weekly newspaper — tire me out. 
They make me long for something more social and 
natural than their straight lines. Man is a gre- 
garious animal. It is his nature to snuggify himself. 
But the Quaker affects a contempt for snugness, and 
includes Hogarth's line of beauty among the worldly 
vanities which his religion obliges him to shun. 
Every time I think of Philadelphia my disrespect for 
the science of geometry is increased, and I find my- 
self more and more inclined to believe the most un- 
kind things that Lord Macaulay can say about Mr. 
Penn, its founder. Cherishing such sentiments as 
these, is it wonderful that I find Genoa a pleasant 
city? I enjoy its gay port, its thronged market place, 
its sumptuous churches, with gilded vaults and pan- 
els, and checkered exteriors, its well-dressed people, 
from the bluff coachman, who laughed at my at- 
tempts to understand the Genoese dialect, to the 
devout feminines in their graceful white veils, which 
give the whole city a peculiarly festive and nuptial 
appearance: but it must be acknowledged, that the 

C493 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

up-and-down-stairsy feature of the town is not grate- 
ful to my gouty feet. 

I must not weary you, dear reader, with any 
attempts to describe the delightful four days' jour- 
ney from Genoa to Florence, in a vettura. The 
Cornice road, with its steep cliffs or trim villas on one 
side, and the clear blue Mediterranean on the other, 
— those pleasant old towns, pervaded with an air of 
respectable antiquity, Chiavari, Sestri, Sarzana, 
Spezzia, with its beautiful gulf, whose waters looked 
so pure and calm that it was difficult to think that 
they could ever have swallowed poor Percy Shelley, 
and robbed English literature of one of its brightest 
ornaments, — Pietra Santa, Carrara, with its queer 
old church, its quarries, its door-steps and window- 
sills of milk-white marble, and its throng of artists, 
—the little marble city of Massa Ducale, nestling 
among the mountains,— the vast groves of olives, 
whose ash-coloured leaves made noontide seem like 
twilight, — all these things would require a great ex- 
penditure of time and rhetoric, and therefore I will 
not even allude to them. 

Neither will I tire you with any reference to my 
brief sojourn in Pisa. I will not tell how delightful 
it was to perambulate the clean streets of that peace- 
ful city, — how I enjoyed the view from the bridges, 
the ancient towers and domes, and the lofty palaces, 
whose fair fronts are mirrored in the soft-flowing 
Arno. I will not attempt to describe the enchant- 
ment produced by that noble architectural group,— 
the Cathedral, the Baptistery, the Campanile, and 
the Campo Santo,— nor the joy I felt on making a 
closer acquaintance with that graceful tower, whose 

C50] 



GENOA AND FLORENCE 

inexplicable dereliction from the perfect uprightness 
which is inculcated as a primary duty in all similar 
structures, was made familiar to me at an early age, 
through the medium of a remarkable wood-cut in my 
school Geography. I will not tell how I fatigued my 
sense with the forms of beauty with which that glo- 
rious church is filled,— how refreshing its holy quiet 
and subdued light were to my travel-worn spirit, — 
nor how the majestic cloisters of the Campo Santo, 
with their delicate traceries, antique frescoes, and 
constantly varying light and shade, elevated and 
purified my heart of the sordid spirit of this mean, 
practical age, until I felt that to live amid such scenes, 
and to be buried at last in the earth of Palestine, 
under the shade of those solemn arches, was the only 
worthy object of human ambition. 

I entered Florence late in the afternoon, under 
cover of a fog that would have done credit to Lon- 
don in the depths of its November nebulosity. It 
was rather an unbecoming dress for the style of 
beauty of the Tuscan capital,— that mantle of chill 
vapour, — but it was worn but a few hours, and the sun 
rose the next morning in all his legitimate splendour, 
and darted his rays through as clear and frosty an 
atmosphere as ever fell to the lot of even that 
favoured country. I have once or twice heard the 
epithet "beautiful" applied to this city; indeed, I will 
not be sure that I have not met with it in some book 
or other. It is, in fact, the only word that can be 
used with any propriety concerning this charming 
place. It is not vast like Rome, nor is the soul of its 
beholder saddened by the sight of mighty ruins, or 
burdened with the weight of thousands of years of 

C5I-3 






MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

heroic history. It does not possess the broad Bay of 
Naples, nor is it watched over by a stupendous vol- 
cano, smoking leisurely for want of some better occu- 
pation. But it lies in the valley of the Arno, one of 
the most harmonious and impressive works of art 
that the world has ever seen, surrounded by natural 
beauties that realize the most ecstatic dreams of 
poesy. 

Firenze la bella! Who can look at her from any 
of the terraced hills that enclose her from the rude 
world, and deny her that title? That fertile plain 
which stretches from her very walls to the edge of 
the horizon— those picturesque hills, dotted with 
lovely villas— those orchards and vineyards, in their 
glory of gold and purple— that river, stealing noise- 
lessly to the sea— and far away the hoary peaks of 
the Apennines, changing their hue with every hour of 
sun-light, and displaying their most gorgeous robes, 
in honour of the departing day,— I pity the man who 
can look upon them without a momentary feeling of 
inspiration. The view from Fiesole is consolation 
enough for a life of disappointment, and ought to 
make all future earthly trials seem as nothing to him 
who is permitted to enjoy it. 

And then, those domes and towers, so eloquent of 
the genius of Giotto and Brunelleschi and of the pub- 
lic spirit and earnest devotion of ages which modern 
ignorance stigmatizes as "dark,"— who can behold 
them without a thrill? The battlemented tower of 
the Palazzo Vecchio — which seems as if it had been 
hewn out of solid rock, rather than built up by the 
patient labour of the mason— looks down upon the 
peaceful city with a composure that seems almost in- 

C523 



GENOA AND FLORENCE 

telligent, and makes you wonder whether it appeared 
the same when the signiory of Florence held their 
councils under its massive walls, and in those dark 
days when the tyrannous factions of Guelph and 
Ghibelline celebrated their bloody carnival. The 
graceful Campanile of the cathedral, with its col- 
oured marbles, seems too much like a mantel orna- 
ment to be exposed to the changes of the weather. 
Amid the other domes and towers of the city rises 
the vast dome of the cathedral, the forerunner of 
that of St. Peter's, and almost its equal. It appears 
to be conscious of its superiority to the neighbouring 
architectural monuments, and merits Hallam's de- 
scription— "an emblem of the Catholic hierarchy 
under its supreme head; like Rome itself, imposing, 
unbroken, unchangeable, radiating in equal expan- 
sion to every part of the earth, and directing its 
convergent curves to heaven." 

There is no city in the world so full of memories 
of the middle ages as Florence. Its very palaces, 
with their heavily barred basement windows, look as 
if they were built to stand a siege. Their sombre 
walls are in strong contrast with the bloom and sun- 
shine which we naturally associate with the valley of 
the Arno. Their magnificent proportions and the 
massiveness of their construction oppress you with 
recollections of the warlike days in which they were 
erected. You wonder, as you stand in their court- 
yards, or perambulate the streets darkened by their 
overhanging cornices, what has become of all the 
cavaliers; and if a gentleman in "complete steel" 
should lift his visor to accost you, it would not startle 
you so much as to hear two English tourists with the 

C53] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

inevitable red guide-books under their arms, con- 
versing about the "Grand Juke." Wherever one 
may turn his steps in Florence, he meets with some 
object of beauty or historical interest; yet among all 
these charms and wonders there is one building upon 
which my eyes and mind are never tired of feeding. 
The Palazzo Riccardi, the cradle of the great Me- 
dici family, is not less impressive in its architecture 
than in its historic associations. Its black walls have 
a greater charm for me than the variegated marbles 
of the Duomo. It was built by the great Cosmo de' 
Medici, and was the home of that family of merchant 
princes in the most glorious period of its history, 
when a grateful people delighted to render to its 
members that homage which is equally honourable to 
"him that gives and him that takes." The genius of 
Michel Angelo and Donatello is impressed upon it. 
It was within those lofty halls that Cosmo and his 
grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent, welcomed pon- 
tiffs and princes, and the illustrious but untitled 
nobility of literature and art, which was the boast of 
their age. The ancient glories of the majestic pile 
are kept in mind by an inscription which greets him 
who enters it with an exhortation to "reverence with 
gratitude the ancient mansion of the Medici, in 
which not merely so many illustrious men, but Wis- 
dom herself abode— a house which was the nurse of 
revived learning." 

I wonder whether any one ever was tired of stroll- 
ing about these old streets and squares. At my time 
of life, walking is not particularly agreeable, even if 
it be not interfered with by either of those foes to 
active exercise and grace of movement— rheumatism 

C543 



GENOA AND FLORENCE 

or gout; but I must acknowledge that I have found 
such pleasure in rambling through the familiar 
streets of this delightful city, that I have taken no 
note of bodily fatigue, and have forgotten the crutch 
or cane which is my inseparable companion. It is all 
the same to me whether I walk about the streets, or 
loiter in the Boboli Gardens, or listen to the delicious 
music of the full military band that plays daily for 
an hour before sunset under the shade of the Gascine. 
They all afford me a kind of vague pleasure — very 
much that sort of satisfaction which springs from 
hearing a cat purr, or from watching the fitful blaze 
of a wood fire. I have no fondness for jewelry, and 
the great Kohinoor diamond and all the crown 
jewels of Russia could not invest respectable useless- 
ness or aristocratic vice with any beauty for me, nor 
add any charm to a bright, intelligent face, such as 
lights up many a home in this selfish world; yet I 
have spent hours in looking at the stalls on the 
Jeweller's Bridge, and enjoying the covetous looks 
bestowed by so many passers-by upon their glittering 
contents. 

There are some excellent bookstalls here, and I 
have renewed the joys of past years and the memory 
of Paternoster Row, Fleet Street, Holborn, the 
Strand, and of the quays of Paris, in the inspection 
of their stock. I have a strong affection for book- 
stalls, and had much rather buy a book at one than in 
a shop. In the first place it would be cheaper ; in the 
second place it would be a little worn, and I should 
become the possessor, not only of the volume, but of 
its associations with other lovers of books who 
turned over its leaves, reading here and there, envy- 

C55 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

ing the future purchaser. For books, so long as they 
are well used, increase in value as they grow in age. 
Sir William Jones's assertion, that "the best monu- 
ment that can be erected to a man of literary talents 
is a good edition of his works," is not to be denied; 
but who would think of reading, for the enjoyment 
of the thing, a modern edition of Sir Thomas 
Browne, or Izaak Walton? Who would wish to 
read Hamlet in a volume redolent of printers' ink 
and binders' glue? Who would read a clean new 
copy of Robinson Crusoe when he might have one 
that had seen service in a circulating library, or had 
been well thumbed by several generations of adven- 
ture-loving boys ? A book is to me like a hat or coat 
— a very uncomfortable thing until the newness has 
been worn off. 

It is in the churches of Florence that my enthu- 
siasm reaches its meridian. This solemn cathedral, 
with its richly dight windows, — whose warm hues 
must have teen stolen from the palette of Titian or 
Tintoretto, — makes me forget all earthly hopes and 
sorrows ; and the majestic Santa Maria Novella and 
San Lorenzo, with their peaceful cloisters and treas- 
ures of literature and art, appeal strongly to my 
religious sensibilities, while they completely satisfy 
my taste. And then Santa Croce, solemn, not merely 
as a place of worship, but as the repository of the 
dust of many of those illustrious men whose genius 
illumined the world during the fourteenth and fif- 
teenth centuries! I have enjoyed Santa Croce par- 
ticularly, because I have seen more of the religious 
life of the Florentine people there. For more than 
a week I have been there every evening, just after 

C56] 



GENOA AND FLORENCE 

sunset, when the only light that illuminated those 
ancient arches came from the high altar, which ap- 
peared like a vision of heaven in the midst of the 
thickest darkness of earth. The nave and aisles of 
that vast edifice were thronged: men, women, and 
children were kneeling upon that pavement which 
contains the records of so much goodness and great- 
ness. I have heard great choirs ; I have been thrilled 
by the wondrous power of voices that seemed too 
much like those of angels for poor humanity to listen 
to; but I have never before been so overwhelmed as 
by the hearty music of that vast multitude. 

The galleries of art need another volume and an 
abler pen than mine. Free to the people as the sun- 
light and the shade of the public gardens, they make 
an American blush to think of the niggardly spirit 
that prevails in the country which he would fain per- 
suade himself is the most favoured of all earthly 
abodes. The Academy, the Pitti, the Uffizi, make 
you think that life is too short, and that art is indeed 
long. You wish that you had more months to devote 
to them than you have days. Great as is the pleasure 
that I have found in them, I have found myself 
lingering more fondly in the cloisters and corridors 
of San Marco than amid the wonderful works that 
deck the walls of the palaces. The pencil of Beato 
Angelico has consecrated that dead plastering, and 
given to it a divine life. The rapt devotion and holy 
tranquillity of those faces reflect the glory of the 
eternal world. I ask no more convincing proof of 
the immortality of the soul, than the fact that those 
forms of beauty and holiness were conceived and 
executed by a mortal. 

C573 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

It is enough to excite the indignation of any re- 
flective Englishman or American to visit Florence, 
and compare— or perhaps I ought rather to say con- 
trast—the facts which force themselves upon his at- 
tention, with the prejudices implanted in his mind by 
early education. Surely, he has a right to be aston- 
ished, and may be excused if he indulges in a little 
honest anger, when he looks for the first time at the 
masterpieces of art which had their origin in those 
ages which he has been taught to consider a period of 
ignorance and barbarism. He certainly obtains a new 
idea of the "barbarism" of the middle ages, when he 
visits the benevolent institutions which they have 
bequeathed to our times, and when he sees the ad- 
mirable working of the Compagnia delta Misericor- 
dia, which unites all classes of society, from the 
grand duke to his humblest subject, in the bonds of 
religion and philanthropy. He may be pardoned, 
too, if he comes to the conclusion that the liberal arts 
were not entirely neglected in the age that produced 
a Dante and a Petrarch, a Cimabue and a Giotto,— 
not to mention a host of other names, which may not 
shine so brightly as these, but are alike superior to 
temporal accidents,— and he cannot be considered 
unreasonable if he refuses to believe that the ages 
which witnessed the establishment of universities like 
those of Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Prague, Bo- 
logna, Salamanca, Vienna, Ferrara, Ingolstadt, 
Louvain, Leipsic, &c, were quite so deeply sunk in 
darkness, or were held in an intellectual bondage so 
utterly hopeless, as the eulogists of the nineteenth 
century would persuade him. The monuments of 
learning, art, and benevolence, with which Florence 

C58] 



GENOA AND FLORENCE 

is filled, will convince any thinking man that those 
who speak of the times I have alluded to as the "dark 
ages," mean thereby the ages concerning which they 
are in the dark; and admirably exemplify in their 
own shallow self-sufficiency the ignorance they would 
impute to the ages when learning and all good arts 
were the handmaids of religion. 



C59] 



ANCIENT ROME 

THE moment in which one takes his first look at 
Rome is an epoch in his life. Even if his edu- 
cation should have been a most illiberal one, and he 
himself should be as strenuous an opponent of pon- 
tifical prerogatives as John of Leyden or Dr. Dowl- 
ing, he is sure to be, for the time, imbued in some 
measure with the feelings of a pilgrim. The sight of 
that city which has exercised such a mighty influence 
on the world, almost from its very foundation, fills 
his mind with "troublings of strange joy." His 
vague notions of ancient history assume a more dis- 
tinct form. The twelve Caesars pass before his 
mind's eye like the spectral kings before the Scotch 
usurper. The classics which he used to neglect so 
shamefully at school, the historical lessons which he 
thought so dull, have been endowed with life and in- 
terest by that one glance of his astonished eye. But 
if he loved the classics in his youth,— if the wander- 
ings of iEneas and the woes of Dido charmed instead 
of tiring him,— if "Livy's pictured page," the pol- 
ished periods of Sallust and Tacitus, and the mighty 
eloquence of Cicero, were to him a mine of delight 
rather than a task, — how does his eye glisten with 
renewed youth, and his heart swell as his old boyish 
enthusiasm is once more kindled within it ! He feels 
that he has reached the goal to which his heart and 
mind were turned during his purest and most un- 

[603 



ANCIENT ROME 

selfish years; and if he were as unswayed by human 
respect as he was then, he would kneel down with the 
travel-worn pilgrims by the wayside to give utterance 
to his gratitude, and to greet the queen city of the 
world: Salve, magna parens! 

I shall not easily forget the cloudless afternoon 
when I first took that long, wearisome ride from 
Civita Vecchia to Rome. There was no railway in 
those days, as there is now, and the diligence was of 
so rude and uncomfortable a make that I half sus- 
pected it to be the one upon the top of which Han- 
nibal is said to have crossed the Alps, (summd 
dUigentid.) I shared the coupe with two other suf- 
ferers, and was, like them, so fatigued that it seemed 
as if a celestial vision would be powerless to make 
me forgetful of my aching joints, when (after a 
laborious pull up a hill which might be included 
among the "everlasting hills" spoken of in holy writ) 
our long-booted postilion turned his expressive face 
towards us, and banished all our weariness by ex- 
claiming, as he pointed into the blue distance with his 
short whip-handle, "Ecco/ Roma! San Pietro!" 

A single glance of the eye served to overcome all 
our fatigue. There lay the world's capital, crowned 
by the mighty dome of the Vatican basilica, and we 
were every moment drawing nearer to it. It was 
evening before we found ourselves staring at those 
dark walls which have withstood so many sieges, 
and heard the welcome demand for passports, which 
informed us that we had reached the gate of the city. 

I was really in Rome,— I was in that city hallowed 
by so many classical, historical, and sacred associa- 
tions,— and it all seemed to me like a confused 

C6i] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

dream. Twice, before the diligence had gone a hun- 
dred yards inside the gate, I had pinched myself to 
ascertain whether I was really awake ; and even after 
I passed through the lofty colonnade of St. Peter's, 
and had gazed at the front of the church and the 
vast square which art has made familiar to every 
one, and had seen the fountains with the moonbeams 
flashing in their silvery spray, I feared lest something 
should interrupt my dream, and I should wake to 
find myself in my snug bedroom at home, wondering 
at the weakness which allowed me to be seduced into 
the eating of a bit of cheese the evening before. It 
was not so, however; no disorganizing cheese had 
interfered with my digestion ; it was no dream ; and 
I was really in Rome. I slept soundly when I reached 
my hotel, for I felt sure that no hostile Brennus lay 
in wait to disturb the city's peace, and the grateful 
hardness of my bed convinced me that all the geese 
of the capital had not been killed, if the enemy 
should effect an entrance. 

There are few people who love Rome at first sight. 
The ruins, that bear witness to her grandeur in the 
days of her worldly supremacy, oppress you at first 
with an inexpressible sadness. The absence of any 
thing like the business enterprise and energy of this 
commercial age makes English and American people 
long at first for a little of the bustle and roar of 
Broadway and the Strand. The small paving stones, 
which make the feet of those who are unaccustomed 
to them ache severely, the brick and stone floors of 
the houses, and the lack of the little comforts of 
modern civilization, render Rome a wearisome place, 
until one has caught its spirit. Little does he think 

C62] 



ANCIENT ROME 

who for the first time gazes on those gray, moulder- 
ing walls, on which "dull time feeds like slow fire 
upon a hoary brand," or walks those streets in which 
the past and present are so strangely commingled,— 
little does he realize how dear those scenes will one 
day be to him. He cannot foresee the regret with 
which he will leave those things that seem too com- 
mon and familiar to deserve attention, nor the glow- 
ing enthusiasm which their mention will inspire in 
after years ; and he would smile incredulously if any 
one were to predict to him that his heart, in after 
times, will swell with homesick longings as he recalls 
the memory of that ancient city, and that he will one 
day salute it from afar as his second home. 

I make no claims to antiquarian knowledge ; for I 
do not love antiquity for itself alone. It is only by 
force of association that antiquity has any charms for 
me. The pyramids of Egypt would awaken my re- 
spect, not so much by their age or size, as by the 
remembrance of the momentous scenes which have 
been enacted in their useless and ungraceful presence. 
Show me a scroll so ancient that human science can 
obtain no key to the mysteries locked up in the 
strange figures inscribed upon it, and you would 
move me but little. But place before me one of those 
manuscripts (filled with scholastic lore, instinct with 
classic eloquence, or luminous with the word of eter- 
nal life) which have come down to us from those 
nurseries of learning and piety, the monasteries of 
the middle ages, and you fill me with the intensest 
enthusiasm. There is food for the imagination hid- 
den under those worm-eaten covers and brazen 
clasps. I see in those fair pages something more 

C6 3 ] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

than the results of the patient toil which perpetuated 
those precious truths. From those carefully penned 
lines, and brilliant initial letters, the pale, thoughtful 
face of the transcriber looks upon me— his contempt 
of worldly ambition and sacrifice of human consola- 
tions are reflected there— and from the quiet of his 
austere cell, he seems to dart from his serene eyes a 
glance of patient reproach at the worldlier and more 
modern age which reaps the fruit of his labour, and 
repays him by slandering his character. Show me a 
building whose stupendous masonry seems the work 
of Titan hands, but whose history is lost in the twi- 
light of the ages, so that no record remains of a time 
when it was any thing but an antique enigma, and its 
massive columns and Cyclopean proportions will not 
touch me so nearly as the stone in Florence where 
Dante used to stand and gaze upon that dome which 
Michel Angelo said he would not imitate, and could 
not excel. 

Feeling thus about antiquities, I need not say that 
those of Rome, so crowned with the most thrilling 
historical and personal associations, are not wanting 
in charms for me. Yet I do not claim to be an anti- 
quarian. It is all one to me whether the column of 
Phocas be forty feet high or sixty,— whether a ruin 
on the Palatine that fascinates me by its richness and 
grandeur, was once a Temple of Minerva or of 
Jupiter Stator; or whether its foundations are of 
travertine or tufa. I abhor details. My enjoyment 
of a landscape would be at an end if I were called 
upon to count the mild-eyed cattle that contribute so 
much to its picturesqueness ; and I have no wish to 
disturb my appreciation of the spirit of a place con- 

C64] 



ANCIENT ROME 

secrated by ages of heroic history, by entertaining 
any of the learned conjectures of professional anti- 
quarians. It is enough for me to know that I am 
standing on the spot where Romulus built his straw- 
thatched palace, and his irreverent brother leaped 
over the walls of the future mistress of the nations. 
Standing in the midst of the relics of the grandeur of 
imperial Rome, the whole of her wonderful history 
is constantly acting over again in my mind. The 
stern simplicity of those who laid the foundations of 
her greatness, the patriotic daring of those who ex- 
tended her power, the wisdom of those who termi- 
nated civil strife by compelling the divided citizens to 
unite against a foreign foe, are all present to me. In 
that august place where Cicero pleaded, gazing upon 
that mount where captive kings did homage to the 
masters of the world, your mere antiquarian, with 
his pestilent theories and measurements, seems to me 
little better than a profaner. When I see such a one 
scratching about the base of some majestic column in 
the Forum (although I cannot but be grateful to 
those whose researches have developed the greatness 
of the imperial city,) I do long to interrupt him, and 
remind him that his "tread is on an empire's dust." 
I wish to recall him from the petty details in which 
he delights, and have him enjoy with me the gran- 
deur and dignity of the whole scene. 

The triumphal arches,— the monuments of the cul- 
tivation of those remote ages, no less than of the 
power of the state which erected them, — the me- 
morials of the luxury that paved the way to the de- 
cline of that power— all these things impress me with 
the thought of the long years that intervened be- 

C65] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

tween that splendour and the times when the seat of 
universal empire was inhabited only by shepherds 
and their flocks. It wearies me to think of the long 
centuries of human effort that were required to bring 
Rome to its culminating point of glory; and it affords 
me a melancholy kind of amusement to contrast the 
spirit of those who laid the deep and strong founda- 
tions of that prosperity and power, with that of 
some modern sages, to whom a hundred years are a 
respectable antiquity, and who seem to think that 
commercial enterprise and the will of a fickle popu- 
lace form as secure a basis for a state as private 
virtue, and the principle of obedience to law. I know 
a country, yet in the first century of its national ex- 
istence, full of hope and ambition, and possessing 
advantages such as never before fell to the lot of a 
young empire, but lacking in those powers which 
made Rome what she was. If that country, u the 
newest born of nations, the latest hope of mankind," 
which has so rapidly risen to a power surpassing in 
extent that of ancient Rome, and bears within itself 
the elements of the decay that ruined the old empire, 
—wealth, vice, corruption,— if she could overcome 
the vain notion that hers is an exceptional case, and 
that she is not subject to that great law of nature 
which makes personal virtue the corner-stone of na- 
tional stability and the lack of that its bane, and could 
look calmly upon the remains of old Rome's gran- 
deur, she might learn a great lesson. Contemplat- 
ing the patient formation of that far-reaching 
dominion until it found its perfect consummation in 
the age of Augustus, ( Tanta molls erat Romanam 
condere gentem,) she would see that true national 

[66] 



ANCIENT ROME 

greatness is not "the hasty product of a day"; that 
demagogues and adventurers, who have made poli- 
tics their trade, are not the architects of that 
greatness ; and that the parchment on which the con- 
stitution and laws of a country are written, might as 
well be used for drum-heads when reverence and 
obedience have departed from the hearts of its 
people. 

A gifted representative of a name which is classi- 
cal in the history of the drama, some years ago gave 
to the world a journal of her residence in Rome. 
She called her volume U A Year of Consolation"— a 
title as true as it is poetical. Indeed I know of noth- 
ing more soothing to the spirit than a walk through 
these ancient streets, or an hour of meditation amid 
these remains of fallen majesty. To stand in the 
arena of the Coliseum in the noonday glare, or when 
those ponderous arches cast their lengthened shad- 
ows on the spot where the first Roman Christians 
were sacrificed to make a holiday for a brutalized 
populace,— to muse in the Pantheon, that changeless 
temple of a living, and monument of a dead, wor- 
ship, and reflect on the many generations that have 
passed beneath its majestic portico from the days of 
Agrippa to our own,— to listen to the birds that sing 
amid the shrubbery which decks the stupendous 
arches of the Baths of Caracalla,— to be over- 
whelmed by the stillness of the Campagna while the 
eye is filled with that rolling verdure which seems in 
the hazy distance like the waves of the unquiet sea— 
what are all these things but consolations in the 
truest sense of the word ? What is the bitterest grief 
that ever pierced a human heart through a long life 

C67] 






MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

of sorrows, compared to the dumb woe of that 
mighty desolation? What are our brief sufferings, 
when they are brought into the august presence of a 
mourner who has seen her hopes one by one taken 
from her, through centuries of war and rapine, neg- 
lect and silent decay? 

Among all of Rome's monuments of antiquity, 
there are few that impress me so strangely as those 
old Egyptian obelisks, the trophies of the victorious 
emperors, which the pontiffs have made to contribute 
so greatly to the adornment of their capital. It is 
almost impossible to turn a corner of one of the prin- 
cipal streets of the city without seeing one of these 
peculiar shafts that give a fine finish to the perspec- 
tive. If their cold granite forms could speak, what 
a strange history they would reveal ! They were wit- 
nesses of the achievements of a power which reached 
its noonday splendour centuries before the shepherd 
Faustulus took the foundling brothers into his cottage 
on the banks of the Tiber. The civilization of 
which they are the relics had declined before the 
Roman kings inaugurated that which afterwards re- 
claimed all Europe from the barbarians. Yet there 
they stand as grim and silent as if they had but yes- 
terday been rescued from the captivity of the native 
quarry, and had never seen a nobler form than those 
of the dusty artisans who wrought them— as dull and 
unimpressible as some of the stupid tourists whom I 
see daily gazing upon these glorious monuments, and 
seeing only so much brick and stone. 



C68] 



MODERN ROME 

ACKNOWLEDGING as I do the charms which 
±Sl the Rome of antiquity possesses for me, it 
must still be confessed that the Rome of the present 
time enchants me with attractions scarcely less po- 
tent. Religion has consecrated many* of the spots 
which history had made venerable, and thus added a 
new lustre to their associations. I turn from the 
broken columns and gray mouldering walls of old 
Rome to those fanes, "so ancient, yet so new," in 
which the piety of centuries has found its enduring 
expression. Beneath their sounding arches, by the 
mild light of the lamps that burn unceasingly around 
their shrines, who would vex his brain with anti- 
quarian lore? We may notice that the pavement is 
worn away by the multitudes which have been drawn 
thither by curiosity or devotion; but we feel that 
Heaven's chronology is not an affair of months and 
years, and that Peter and Paul, Gregory and Leo, 
are not mere personages in a drama upon the first 
acts of which the curtain long since descended. Who 
thinks of antiquity while he inhabits that world of 
art which Rome encloses within her walls? Those 
are not the triumphs of a past age alone; they are 
the triumphs of to-day. The Apollo's bearing is not 
less manly, its step not less elastic, than it was in that 
remote age when its unknown sculptor threw aside 
his chisel and gazed upon his finished work. To- 

[69] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

day's sunshine is not more clear and golden than that 
which glows in the landscapes of Claude Lorraine, 
though he who thus made the sunbeams his servants 
has been sleeping for nearly two centuries in the 
dusty vaults of Trinita de' Monti. Were Raphael's 
deathless faces more real while he was living than 
they are now? Were Guido's and Domenichino's 
triumphs more worthy of admiration while the paint 
was wet upon them? or were the achievements of 
that giant of art, Michel Angelo, ever more wonder- 
ful than now? No; these great works take no note 
of time, and confer upon the city which contains them 
something of their own immortality. 

I have heard people regret that so many of our 
artists should expatriate themselves, and spend their 
lives in Rome or Florence. To me, however, nothing 
seems more natural; and if I were a painter, or a 
sculptor, I feel certain that I should share the com- 
mon weakness of the profession for a place of resi- 
dence in harmony with my art. What sympathy can 
a true artist feel with a state of society in which he is 
regarded by nine people out of ten as a useless 
member, because he does not directly aid in the pro- 
duction of a given quantity of grain or of cloth? 
Every stroke of his brush, every movement of his 
hands in moulding the obedient clay, is a protest 
against the low, mean, materialistic views of life 
which prevail among us; and it is too much to ask of 
any man that he shall spend his days in trying to live 
peaceably in an enemy's camp. When figs and dates 
become common articles of food in Lapland, and the 
bleak sides of the hills of New Hampshire are 
adorned with the graceful palm tree and the luxu- 

[70] 



MODERN ROME 

riant foliage of the tropics, you may expect art to 
flourish in a community whose god is commerce, and 
whose chief religious duty is money-getting. 

Truly the life of an artist in Rome is about as near 
the perfection of earthly happiness as is commonly 
vouchsafed to mortal man. The tone of society, and 
all the surroundings of the artist, are so congenial 
that no poverty nor privation can seriously interfere 
with them. The streets, with their architectural 
marvels, the trim gardens and picturesque cloisters of 
the old religious establishments, the magnificent 
villas of the neighbourhood of the city, and the vast, 
mysterious Campagna, with its gigantic aqueducts 
and its purple atmosphere, and those glorious gal- 
leries which at the same time gratify the taste of the 
artist and feed his ambition,— -these are things which 
are as free to him as the blessed sunlight or the water 
that sparkles in the countless fountains of the Holy 
City. I do not wonder that artists who have lived 
any considerable time in Rome are discontented with 
the feverish restlessness of our American way of life, 
and that, after "stifling the mighty hunger of the 
heart" through two or three wearisome years in our 
western world, they turn to Rome as to a fond 
mother, upon whose breast they may find that peace 
which they had elsewhere sought in vain. 

The churches of Rome impress me in a way which 
I have never heard described by any other person. I 
do not speak of St. Peter's, (that "noblest temple 
that human skill ever raised to the honour of the 
Creator," ) nor do I refer to those other magnificent 
basilicas in which the Christian glories of eighteen 
centuries sit enthroned. These have a dignity and 

C70 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

majesty peculiarly their own, and the most thought- 
less cannot tread their ancient pavement without 
being for the time subdued into awe and veneration. 
But the parish churches of Rome, the churches of the 
various religious orders and congregations, and 
those numerous little temples which are so thickly 
scattered through the city, attract me in a manner 
especially fascinating. There is an air of cosiness 
and at-home-ativeness about them which cannot be 
found in the grander fanes. Spme of them seem by 
their architectural finish to have been built in some 
fine street or square, and to have wandered off in 
search of quiet to their present secluded positions. 
It is beneath their arches that the Roman people may 
be seen. Before those altars you may see men, wo- 
men, and children kneeling, their lips scarcely mov- 
ing with the petitions which are heard only in another 
world. No intruding tourists, eye-glassed and Mur- 
rayed, interfere with their devotions, and the silence 
of the sacred place is unbroken, save by the rattling 
of a rosary, or at stated times by the swell of voices 
from the choir chapel. These are the places where 
the real power of the Catholic religion makes itself 
felt more unmistakably than in the grandest cathe- 
drals, where every form and sound is eloquent of 
worship. I remember with pleasure that once in 
London, as I was passing through that miserable 
quarter which lies between Westminster Abbey and 
Buckingham Palace, I was attracted by the appear- 
ance of a number of people who were entering a nar- 
row doorway. One or two stylish carriages, with 
crests upon their panels, and drivers in livery, stood 
before the dingy building which seemed to wear a 



MODERN ROME 

mysterious air of semi-cleanliness in the midst of the 
general squalour. I followed the strange collection 
of the representatives of opulence and the extremest 
poverty through a long passage-way, and found my- 
self in a large room which was tastefully fitted up for 
a Catholic chapel. The simplicity of the place, 
joined with its strictly ecclesiastical look, the excellent 
music, the crowded and devout congregation, and 
the almost breathless attention which was paid to the 
simple and persuasive eloquence of the preacher, 
who was formerly one of the chief ornaments of the 
established church, whose highest honours he had 
cast aside that he might minister more effectually to 
the poor and despised,— all these things astonished 
and delighted me. To see that church preserving, 
even in its hiddenness and poverty, its regard for the 
comeliness of God's worship, and adorning that 
humble chapel in a manner which showed that the 
spirit which erected the shrines of Westminster, 
Salisbury and York, had not died out, carried me 
back in spirit to the catacombs of Rome, where the 
early Christians left the abiding evidences of their 
zeal for the beauty of the house of God. I was at 
that time fresh from the continent, and my mind was 
occupied with the remembrance of the gorgeous 
churches of Italy. Yet, despite my recollection of 
those "forests of porphyry and marble," those altars 
of lapis lazuli, those tabernacles glittering with gold, 
and silver, and precious stones, and those mosaics 
and frescoes whose beauty and variety almost fatigue 
the sense of the beholder,— I must say that it gave 
me a new sense of the dignity and grandeur of the 
ancient Church, to see her in the midst of the pov- 

[73] 



MY .UNKNOWN CHUM 

erty and obscurity to which she is now condemned in 
the land which once professed her faith, and was 
once thickly planted with those institutions of learn- 
ing and charity which are the proudest monuments of 
her progress. A large ship, under full sail, running 
off before a pleasant breeze, is a beautiful sight; but 
it is by no means so grandly impressive as that of the 
same ship, under close canvas, gallantly riding out 
the merciless gale that carried destruction to every 
unseaworthy craft which came within its reach. 

I am not one of those who lament over the mil- 
lions which have been expended upon the churches of 
Rome. I am not inclined to follow the sordid prin- 
ciple of that apostle who is generally held up rather 
as a warning than an example, and say that it had 
been better if the sums which have been devoted to 
architectural ornament had been withheld and given 
to the poor. Religion has no need, it is true, of 
these visible splendours, any more than of set forms 
and modes of speech. For it is the heart that be- 
lieves, and loves, and prays. But we, poor mortals, 
so enslaved by our senses, so susceptible to external 
appearances, need every thing that can inspire in us 
a respect for something higher than ourselves, or 
remind us of the glories of the invisible, eternal 
world. And can we doubt that He who praised the 
action of that pious woman who poured the precious 
ointment upon His sacred head, looks with compla- 
cency upon the sacrifices which are made for the 
adornment of the temples devoted to His worship? 
Is it a right principle that people who are clad in ex- 
pensive garments, who are not content unless they 
are surrounded by carved or enamelled furniture, 

[743 



MODERN ROME 

and whose feet tread daily on costly tapestries, 
should find fault with the generous piety which has 
made the churches of Italy what they are, and should 
talk so impressively about the beauty of spiritual 
worship? I have no patience with these advocates 
for simplicity in every thing that does not relate to 
themselves and their own comforts. 

" Shall we serve Heaven with less respect 
Than we do minister to our gross selves ?" 

I care not how simple our private houses may be, but 
I advocate liberality and splendour in our public 
buildings of all kinds, for the sake of preserving a 
due respect for the institutions they enshrine. I re- 
member, in reading one of the old classical writers, 
— Sallust, I think,— in my young days, being greatly 
impressed by his declaration that private luxury is a 
sure forerunner of a nation's downfall, and that it is 
a fatal sign for the dwellings of the citizens to be 
spacious and magnificent, while the public edifices 
are mean and unworthy. Purely intellectual as we 
may think ourselves, we are, nevertheless, somewhat 
deferential to the external proprieties of life, and I 
very much doubt whether the most reverential of us 
could long maintain his respect for the Supreme 
Court if its sessions were held in a tap-room, or for 
religion, if its ministers prayed and preached in pea- 
jackets and top-boots. 

Displeasing as is the presence of most of the Eng- 
lish-speaking tourists one meets in Rome, there are 
two places where they delight to congregate, which 
yet have charms for me that not even Cockney vul- 
garity or Yankee irreverence can destroy. The 

C753 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

church of the convent of Trinita de y Monti wins me, 
in spite of the throng that fills its nave at the hour of 
evening every Sunday and festival day. Some years 
since, when I first visited Rome, the music which was 
heard there was of the highest order of merit. At 
present the nuns of the Sacred Heart have no such 
great artistes in their community as they had then, 
but the music of their choir is still one of those things 
which he who has once heard can never forget. It is 
the only church in Rome in which I have heard 
female voices ; and, though I much prefer the great 
male choirs of the basilicas, there is a soothing sim- 
plicity in the music at Trinita de y Monti which goes 
home to almost every heart. I have seen giddy and 
unthinking girls, who laughed at the ceremonial they 
did not understand, subdued to reverence by those 
strains, and supercilious Englishmen reduced to the 
humiliating necessity of wiping their eyes. Indeed, 
the whole scene is so harmoniously impressive that 
its enchantment cannot be resisted. The solemn 
church, lighted only by the twilight rays, and the 
tapers upon the high altar,— the veiled forms of the 
pious sisterhood and their young pupils in the grated 
sanctuary,— the clouding of the fragrant incense,— 
the tinkling of that silvery bell and of the chains of 
the swinging censer,— those ancient and dignified 
rites,— and over all, those clear, angelic voices pray- 
ing and praising, in litany and hymn— all combine to 
make up a worship, one moment of which would 
seem enough to wipe away the memory of a lifetime 
of folly, and disappointment, and sorrow. 

The Sistine Chapel is another place to which I am 
bound by an almost supernatural fascination. My 

C76] 



MODERN ROME 

imperfect eyesight will not permit me to enjoy fully 
the frescoes that adorn its lofty walls; but I feel that 
I am in the presence of the great master and some of 
his mightiest conceptions. I do not know whether 
the chapel is most impressive in its empty state, or 
when thronged for some great religious function. In 
the former condition, its fine proportions and its 
simplicity satisfy me so completely, that I hardly 
wish for the pomp and splendour which belong to it 
on great occasions. I know of nothing more grand 
than the sight of that simple throne of the Sovereign 
Pontiff, when it is occupied by that benignant old 
man, to whom more than two hundred millions of 
people look with veneration as to a father and a 
teacher,— and surrounded by those illustrious prel- 
ates and princes who compose a senate of moral and 
intellectual worth, such as all the world beside cannot 
parallel. Those venerable figures— those gray hairs 
—those massive foreheads, and those resplendent 
robes of office, seem to be a part of some great his- 
torical picture, rather than a reality before my eyes. 
There is nothing more severe in actual experience, 
or more satisfactory in the recollection, than Holy 
Week in the Sistine Chapel. The crowd, the fatigue, 
and the presence of so many sight-seers, who have 
come with the same feeling that they would attend an 
opera or a play, are not calculated to increase one's 
bodily comfort, or to awaken the sentiments proper 
to so sacred a season as that which is then commemo- 
rated. But after these have passed away, there re- 
mains the recollection, which time does not diminish, 
but makes more precious, of that darkening chapel 
and the bowed-down heads of the Pope and cardi- 

C77] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

nals, of the music, "yearning like a god in pain,'* of 
the melodious woe of the Miserere, the plaintive 
majesty of the Lamentations and the Reproaches, 
and the shrill dissonance of the shouts of the popu- 
lace in the gospel narrative of the crucifixion. These 
are things which would outweigh a year of fatigue 
and pain. I know of no greater or more sincere 
tribute to the perfections of the Sistine choir, and the 
genius of Allegri and Palestrina, than the patience 
with which so many people submit to be packed, like 
herring in a box, into that small chapel. But old and 
gouty as I am, I would gladly undergo all the dis- 
comforts of that time to hear those sounds once 
more. 

I hear some people complain of the beggars, and 
wonder why Rome, with her splendid system of 
charities for the relief of every form of suffering, 
permits mendicancy. For myself, I am not inclined 
to complain either of the beggars or of the merciful 
government, which refuses to look upon them as 
offenders against its laws. On the contrary, it ap- 
pears to me rather creditable than otherwise to 
Rome, that she is so far behind the age, as not to 
class poverty with crime among social evils. I have 
a sincere respect for this feature of the Catholic 
Church; this regard for the poor as her most 
precious inheritance, and this unwillingness that her 
children should think that, because she has organized 
a vast system of benevolence, they are absolved of 
the duty of private charity. In this wisdom, which 
thus provides for the exercise of kindly feelings in 
alms-giving, may be found one of the most attractive 
characteristics of the Roman Church. This, no less 



MODERN ROME 

than the austere religious orders which she has 
founded, shows in what sense she receives the beati- 
tude, "Blessed are the poor in spirit.'' And the same 
kind spirit of equality may be seen in her churches 
and cathedrals, where rich and poor kneel upon the 
same pavement, before their common God and 
Saviour, and in her cloisters, and universities, and 
schools, where social distinctions cannot enter. 

When I walk through the cloisters of these vener- 
able institutions of learning, or gaze upon the ancient 
city from Monte Mario, or the Janiculum, it seems 
to me that never until now did I appreciate the 
world's indebtedness to Rome. Dislike it as we may, 
we cannot disguise the fact, that to her every Chris- 
tian nation owes, in a great measure, its civilization, 
its literature, and its religion. The endless empire 
which Virgil's muse foretold, is still hers ; and, as one 
of her ancient Christian poets said, those lands which 
were not conquered by her victorious arms are held 
in willing obedience by her religion. When I think 
how all our modern civilization, our art, letters, and 
jurisprudence, sprang originally from Rome, it ap- 
pears to me that a narrow religious prejudice has 
prevented our forming a due estimate of her services 
to humanity. To some, the glories of the ancient 
empire, the memory of the days when her sover- 
eignty extended from Britain to the Ganges, and her 
capital counted its inhabitants by millions, seem to 
render all her later history insignificant and dull; but 
to my mind the moral dignity and power of Christian 
Rome is as superior to her old military omnipotence 
as it is possible for the human intellect to conceive. 
The ancient emperors, with all their power, could 

C79] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

not carry the Roman name much beyond the limits of 
Europe; the rulers who have succeeded them have 
made the majestic language of Rome familiar to two 
hemispheres, and have built up, by spiritual arms, the 
mightiest empire that the world has ever seen. For 
me, Rome's most enduring glories are the memories 
of the times when her great missionary orders civil- 
ized and evangelized the countries which her arms 
had won, when her martyrs sowed the seed of 
Christianity with their blood, and her confessors il- 
lumined the world with their virtues ; when her pon- 
tiffs, single-handed, turned back barbarian invasions, 
or mitigated the severities of the feudal age, or pro- 
tected the people by laying their ban upon the tyrants 
who oppressed them, or defended the sanctity of 
marriage, and the rights of helpless women against 
divorce-seeking monarchs and conquerors. These 
things are the true fulfilment of the glowing prophecy 
of Rome's greatness, which Virgil puts into the 
mouth of Anchises, when iEneasnasits the Elysian 
Fields, and hears from his old father that the mis- 
sion of the government he is about to found is to rule 
the world by moral power, to make peace between 
opposing nations, to spare the subject, and to subdue 
the proud : 

"Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento; 
Hae tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem, 
Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos." 



£*>! 



ROME TO MARSEILLES 

THE weather was fearfully hot the day of my 
departure from Rome. The sun was staring 
down, without winking, upon that wonderful old 
city, as if he loved the sight. The yellow current of 
old Father Tiber seemed yellower than ever in the 
glare. Except from sheer necessity, no person 
moved abroad; for the atmosphere, which early in 
the morning had seemed like airs from heaven, be- 
fore noon had become most uncomfortably like a 
blast from the opposite direction. The Piazza di 
Spagna was like Tadmor in the wilderness. Not a 
single English tourist, with his well-read Murray 
under his arm, was to be seen there; not a carriage 
driver broke the stillness of the place with his poly- 
glot solicitations to ride. The great staircase of 
Trinita de y Monti seemed an impossibility; to have 
climbed up its weary ascent under that broiling sun 
would have been poor entertainment for man or 
beast. The squares of the city were like furnaces, 
and made one mentally curse architecture, and bless 
the narrow, shady streets. The soldiers on guard at 
the gates and in the public places looked as if they 
could n't help it. Now and then a Capuchin monk, 
in his heavy, brown habit, girded with the knotted 
cord, toiled along on some errand of benevolence, 
and made one marvel at his endurance. Occasion- 
ally a cardinal rolled by in scarlet state, looking as if 

C8i] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

he gladly would have exchanged the bondage of his 
dignity and power for a single day of virtuous lib- 
erty in linen pantaloons. 

Traffic seemed to have departed this life; there 
were no buyers, and the shopkeepers slumbered at 
their counters. The cafes were shrouded in their 
long, striped awnings, and seemed to invite company 
by their well-wet pavement. A few old Romans 
found energy enough to call for an occasional ice or 
lemonade, and talked in the intervals about Pammer- 
stone, and his agent, Mazzini. How the sun blazed 
down into the Coliseum ! Not a breath of air stirred 
the foliage that clothes that mighty ruin. Even the 
birds were mute. To have crossed that broad arena 
would have perilled life as surely as in those old days 
when the first Roman Christians there confessed 
their faith. On such a day, one's parting visits must 
necessarily be brief; so I left the amphitheatre, and 
walked along the dusty Via Sacra, pausing a moment 
to ponder on the scene of Cicero's triumphs, and of 
so many centuries of thrilling history, and coming to 
the conclusion that, if it were such a day as that when 
Virginius in that place slew his dear little daughter, 
the blow was merciful indeed. The market-place in 
front of the Pantheon, usually so thronged and 
lively, was almost deserted. The fresh, bright vege- 
tables had either all been sold, or had refused to 
grow in such a heat. But the Pantheon itself was 
unchanged. There it stood, in all its severe gran- 
deur, majestic as in the days of the Caesars, the em- 
bodiment of heathenism, the exponent of the worship 
of the old, inexorable gods,— of justice without 
mercy, and power without love. Its interior seemed 

C82] 



ROME TO MARSEILLES 

cool and refreshing, for no heat can penetrate that 
stupendous pile of masonry, — and I gathered new 
strength from my short visit. It was a fine thought 
in the old Romans to adapt the temples of heathen- 
ism to the uses of Christianity. The contrasts sug- 
gested to our minds by this practice are very striking. 
When we see that the images of the old revengeful 
and impure divinities have given place to those of the 
humble and self-denying heroes of Christianity, that 
the Saviour of the world stretches out His arms upon 
the cross, in the place from which the haughty Jupi- 
ter once hurled his thunderbolts, we are borne at 
once to a conclusion more irresistible than any that 
the mere force of language could produce. One of 
our own poets felt this in Rome, and expressed this 
same idea in graceful verse :— 

"The goddess of the woods and fields, 
The healthful huntress undefiled, 
Now with her fabled brother yields 
To sinless Mary and her Child. ,, 

But I must hurry on towards St. Peters. There 
are three places in Rome which every one visits as 
soon as possible after he arrives, and as short a time 
as may be before his departure— the Coliseum, the 
Pantheon, and St. Peter's. The narrow streets be- 
tween the Pantheon and the Bridge of St. Angelo 
were endurable, because they were shady. It was 
necessary to be careful, however, and not trip over 
any of the numerous Roman legs whose proprietors 
were stretched out upon the pavement in various pic- 
turesque postures, sleeping away the long hours of 
that scorching day. At last the bridge is reached. 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

Bernini's frightful statues, which deform its balus- 
trades, seem to be writhing under the influence of the 
sun. I am quite confident that St. Veronica's napkin 
was curling with the heat. The bronze archangel 
stood as usual upon the summit of the Castle of St. 
Angelo. I stopped a few moments, thinking that he 
might see the expediency of sheathing his sword and 
retreating, before he should be compelled, in the con- 
fusion of such a blaze as that, to run away; but it was 
useless. I moved on towards St. Peter's, and he still 
kept guard there as brazen-faced as ever. The great 
square in front of the basilica seemed to have 
scooped up its fill of heat, and every body knows that 
it is capable of containing a great deal. The few 
persons whom devotion or love of art had tempted 
out in such a day, approached it under the shade of 
its beautiful colonnades. I was obliged to content 
myself with the music of one of those superb foum 
tains only, for the workmen were making a new 
basin for the other. St. Peter's never seemed to me 
so wonderful, never filled me up so completely, as it 
did then. The contrast of the heat I had been 
in with that atmosphere of unchangeable coolness, 
the quiet of the vast area, the fewness of people mov- 
ing about, all conspired to impress me with a new 
sense of the majesty and holiness of the place. The 
quiet, unflickering blaze of the numerous lamps that 
burn unceasingly around the tomb of the Prince of 
the Apostles seemed a beacon of immortality. To one 
who could at that hour recall the bustle and turmoil 
of the Boulevards of Paris, or of the Strand, or of 
Broadway, the vast basilica itself seemed to be an 
island of peace in the tempestuous ocean of the 

C84] 



ROME TO MARSEILLES 

world. I am not so blind a lover of Gothic architec- 
ture that I can find no beauty nor religious feeling in 
the Italian churches. I prefer, it is true, the "long- 
drawn aisle and fretted vault," and the "storied win- 
dows richly dight"; but I cannot for that reason 
sneer at the gracefully turned arches, the mosaic 
walls and domes rich in frescoes and precious mar- 
bles, that delight one's eyes in Italy. Both styles are 
good in their proper places. The Gothic and Nor- 
man, with their high-pitched roofs, are the natural 
growth of the snowy north, and to attempt to trans- 
plant them to a land where heat is to be guarded 
against, were as absurd as to expect the pine and fir 
to take the place of the fig tree and the palm. Talk 
as eloquently as we may about being superior to ex- 
ternal impressions, I defy any man to breathe the 
quiet atmosphere of any of these old continental 
churches for a few moments, without feeling that he 
has gathered new strength therefrom to tread the 
thorns of life. Lamartine has spoken eloquently on 
this theme : "Ye columns who veil the sacred asylums 
where my eyes dare not penetrate, at the foot of 
your immovable trunks I come to sigh! Cast over 
me your deep shades, render the darkness more ob- 
scure, and the silence more profound! Forests of 
porphyry and marble ! the air which the soul breathes 
under your arches is full of mystery and of peace ! 
Let love and anxious cares seek shade and solitude 
under the green shelter of groves, to soothe their 
secret wounds. O darkness of the sanctuary ! the eye 
of religion prefers thee to the wood which the breeze 
disturbs! Nothing changes thy foliage; thy still 
shade is the image of motionless eternity!" 

C85] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

There was not time to linger long. The pressure 
of worldly engagements was felt even at the shrine 
of the apostles. I walked about, and tried to recall 
the many splendid religious pageants I had there wit- 
nessed, and wondered sorrowfully whether I should 
ever again listen to that matchless choir, or have my 
heart stirred to its depths by the silver trumpets that 
reecho under that sonorous vault in the most solemn 
moment of religion's holiest rite. Once more out in 
the clear hot atmosphere which seemed hotter than 
before. The Supreme Pontiff was absent from his 
capital, and the Vatican was comparatively empty. 
The Swiss guards, in their fantastic but picturesque 
uniform, were loitering about the foot of the grand 
staircase, and sighing for a breath of the cool air of 
their Alpine home. I took a last long gaze at that 
grand old pile of buildings,— the home of all that is 
most wonderful in art, the abode of that power which 
overthrew the old Roman empire, inaugurated the 
civilization of Europe, and planted Christianity in 
every quarter of the globe,— and then turned my 
unwilling feet homewards. In my course I passed 
the foot of the Janiculum Hill : it was too hot, how- 
ever, to think of climbing up to the convent of Sant' 
Onofrio— though I would gladly have paid a final 
visit to that lovely spot where the munificence of 
Pius IX. has just completed a superb sepulchre for 
the repose of Tasso. So I crossed the Tiber in one 
of those little ferry boats which are attached to a 
cable stretched over the river, and thus are swung 
across by the movement of the current,— a labour- 
saving arrangement preeminently Roman in its char- 
acter—and soon found myself in my lodgings. 

[86] 



ROME TO MARSEILLES 

However warm the weather may be in Rome, one 
can keep tolerably comfortable so long as he does not 
move about,— thanks to the thick walls and heavy 
wooden window shutters of the houses, — so I found 
my room a cool asylum after my morning of labo- 
rious pleasure. 

At last, the good byes having all been said, behold 
me, with my old portmanteau, (covered with its 
many-coloured coat of baggage labels, those trophies 
of many a hard campaign of travel,) at the office of 
the diligence for Civita Vecchia. The luggage and 
the passengers having been successfully stowed away, 
the lumbering vehicle rolled down the narrow streets, 
and we were soon outside the gate that opens upon 
the old Aurelian Way. Here the passports were 
examined, the postilions cracked their whips, and I 
felt indeed that I was "banished from Rome." It is 
a sad thing to leave Rome. I have seen people who 
have made but a brief stay there shed more tears on 
going away than they ever did on a departure from 
home ; but for one who has lived there long enough 
to feel like a Roman citizen— to feel that the broken 
columns of the Forum have become a part of his 
being— to feel as familiar with St. Peter's and the 
Vatican as with the King's Chapel and the Tremont 
House— it is doubly hard to go away. The old city, 
so "rich with the spoils of time," seems invested with 
a personality that appeals most powerfully to every 
man, and would fain hold him back from returning 
to the world. The lover of art there finds its choicest 
treasures ever open to him ; the artist there finds an 
abundance of employment for his chisel or his brush; 
the man of business there finds an asylum from the 

C87] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

vexing cares of a commercial career; the student of 
antiquity or of history can there take his fill amid the 
"wrecks of a world whose ashes still are warm," and 
listen to the centuries receding into the unalterable 
past with their burdens of glory or of crime; the 
lover of practical benevolence will there be delighted 
by the inspection of establishments for the relief of 
every possible form of want and suffering; the en- 
thusiast for education finds there two universities and 
hundreds of public schools of every grade, and all as 
free as the bright water that sparkles in Rome's 
countless fountains; the devout can there rekindle 
their devotion at the shrines of apostles and martyrs, 
and breathe the holy air of cloisters in which saints 
have lived and died, or join their voices with those 
that resound in old churches, whose pavements are 
furrowed by the knees of pious generations; the ad- 
mirer of pomp, and power, and historic associations 
can there witness the more than regal magnificence 
of a power, compared to which the houses of Bour- 
bon or of Hapsburg are but of yesterday; the lover 
of republican simplicity can there find subject for 
admiration in the facility of access to the highest 
authorities, and in the perfection of his favourite 
elective system by which the supreme power is per- 
petuated. There is, in short, no class of men to 
whom Rome does not attach itself. People may 
complain during their first week that it is dull, or 
melancholy, or dirty; but you generally find them 
sorry enough to go away, and looking back to their 
residence there as the happiest period of their exist- 
ence. Somebody has said, — and I wish that I could 
recall the exact words, they are so true,— that when 

C88 3 



ROME TO MARSEILLES 

we leave Paris, or Naples, or Florence, we feel a 
natural sorrow, as if we were parting from a cher- 
ished friend; but on our departure from Rome we 
feel a pang like that of separation from a woman 
whom we love ! 

At last Rome disappeared from sight in the dusk 
of evening, and the discomforts of the journey began 
to make themselves obtrusive. The night air in Italy 
is not considered healthy, and we therefore had the 
windows of the diligence closed. Like Charles Lamb 
after the oyster pie, we were "all full inside," and a 
pretty time we had of it. As to respiration, you 
might as well have expected the performance of that 
function from a mackerel occupying the centre of a 
well-packed barrel of his finny comrades, as of any 
person inside that diligence. Of course there was a 
baby in the company, and of course the baby cried. 
I could not blame it, for even a fat old gentleman 
who sat opposite to me would have cried if he had 
not known how to swear. But it is useless to recall 
the anguish of that night: suffice it to say that for 
several hours the only air we got was an occasional 
vocal performance from the above-mentioned infant. 
At midnight we reached Palo, on the sea coast, 
where I heard "the wild water lapping on the crag," 
and felt more keenly than before that I had indeed 
left Rome behind me. The remainder of the jour- 
ney being along the coast, we had the window open, 
though it was not much better on that account, as we 
were choking with dust. It was small comfort to see 
the cuttings and fillings-in for the railway which is 
destined soon to destroy those beastly diligences, and 
place Rome within two or three hours of its seaport. 

[89 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

At five o'clock in the morning, after ten toilsome 
hours, I found myself, tired, dusty, and hungry, in 
Civita Vecchia, a city which has probably been the 
cause of more profanity than any other part of the 
world, including Flanders. I was determined not to 
be fleeced by any of the hotel keepers; so I stag- 
gered about the streets until I found a barber's shop 
open. Having repaired the damage of the preceding 
night, I hove to in a neighbouring cafe long enough 
to take in a little ballast in the way of breakfast. 
Afterwards I fell in with an Englishman, of consid- 
erable literary reputation, whom I had several times 
met in Rome. He was one of those men who seem 
to possess all sorts of sense except common sense. 
He was full of details, and could tell exactly the 
height of the dome of St. Peter's, or of the great 
pyramid,— could explain the process of the manu- 
facture of the Minie rifle or the boring of an artesian 
well, and could calculate an eclipse with Bond or 
Secchi,— but he could not pack a carpet-bag to save 
his life. That he should have been able to travel so 
far from home alone is a fine commentary on the 
honesty and good nature of the people of the conti- 
nent. I could not help thinking what a time he would 
have were he to attempt to travel in America. He 
would think he had discovered a new nomadic tribe 
in the cabmen of New York. He had come down to 
Civita Vecchia in a most promiscuous style, and 
when I discovered him he was trying to bring about 
a union between some six or eight irreconcilable 
pieces of luggage^* I aided him successfully in the 
work, and his look of perplexity and despair gave 
way to one of gratitude and admiration for his deliv- 

C9o3 



ROME TO MARSEILLES 

erer. Delighted at this escape from the realities of 
his situation, he launched out into a profound dis- 
sertation on the philosophy of language and the for- 
mation of provincial dialects, and it was some time 
before I could bring him down to the common and 
practical business of securing his passage in the 
steamer for Marseilles. Ten o'clock, however, 
found us on board one of the steamers of the Mes- 
sageries Imperiales, and we were very shortly after 
under way. We were so unfortunate as to run aground 
on a little spit of land in getting out of port, as we 
ran a little too near an English steamer that was 
lying there. But a Russian frigate sent off a cable to 
us, and thus established an alliance between their flag 
and the French, which drew the latter out of the 
difficulty in which it had got by too close a proximity 
to its English neighbour. 

It was a beautiful, cloudless day, and reminded me 
of many halcyon days I had spent on that blue Medi- 
terranean in other times. It reminded me of some 
of my childhood's days in the country in New Eng- 
land,— -days described by Emerson where he says 
that we "bask in the shining hours of Florida and 
Cuba," — when "the day, immeasurably long, sleeps 
over the broad hills and warm, wide fields,"— when 
"the cattle, as they lie on the ground, seem to have 
great and tranquil thoughts." It was on such a day 
that I used to delight to pore over my Shakspeare, 
undisturbed by any sound save the hum of the insect 
world, or the impatient switch of the tail, or move- 
ment of the feet, of a horse who had sought the same 
shade I was enjoying. To a man who has been 
rudely used by fortune, or who has drunk deep of 

C90 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

sorrow or disappointment, I can conceive of nothing 
more grateful or consoling than a summer cruise in 
the Mediterranean. "The sick heart often needs a 
warm climate as much as the sick body." 

My English friend, immediately on leaving port, 
took some five or six prescriptions for the prevention 
of seasickness, and then went to bed, so that I had 
some opportunity to look about among our ship's 
company. There were two men, apparently com- 
panions, though they hardly spoke to each other, 
who amused me very much. One was a person of 
about four feet and a half in height, who walked 
about on deck with that manner which so many di- 
minutive persons have, of wishing to be thought as 
tall as Mr. George Barrett. He boasted a deport- 
ment that would have made the elder Turveydrop 
envious, while it was evident that under that serene 
and dignified exterior lay hidden all the warm-heart- 
edness and geniality of that eminent philanthropist 
who was obliged to play a concerto on the violin to 
calm his grief at seeing the conflagration of his na- 
tive city. The other looked as if "he had not loved 
the world, nor the world him" ; he was a thin, bilious- 
looking person, and seemed like a whole serious 
family rolled into one individuality. I felt a great 
deal of curiosity to know whether he was reduced to 
that pitiable condition by piety or indigestion. I felt 
sure that he was meditating suicide as he gazed upon 
the sea, and I stood by him for some time to prevent 
his accomplishing any such purpose, until I became 
convinced that to let him take the jump, if he pleased, 
would be far the more philanthropic course of ac- 
tion. There was a French bishop, and a colonel of 

C92] 



ROME TO MARSEILLES 

the French staff at Rome, among the passengers, and 
by their genial urbanity they fairly divided between 
them the affections of the whole company. Either of 
them would have made a fog in the English Channel 
seem like the sunshine of the Gulf of Egina. I picked 
up a pleasant companion in an Englishman who had 
travelled much and read more, and spent the greater 
part of the day with him. When he found that I was 
an American, he at once asked me if I had ever been 
to Niagara, and had ever seen Longfellow and 
Emerson. I am astonished to find so many culti- 
vated English people who know little or nothing 
about Tennyson; I am inclined to think he has ten 
readers in America to one in England, while the Eng- 
lish can repeat Longfellow by pages. 

After thirty hours of pleasant sailing along by 
Corsica and Elba, and along the coast of France, 
until it seemed as if our cruise (like that of the widow 
of whom we have all read) would never have an 
end, we came to anchor in the midst of a vast fleet 
of steamers in the new port of Marseilles. The 
bustle of commercial activity seemed any thing but 
pleasant after the classical repose of Rome; but the 
landlady of the hotel was most gracious, and when I 
opened the window of my room looking out on the 
Place Royale, one of those peripatetic dispensers of 
melody, whose life (like the late M. Mantalini's 
after he was reduced in circumstances) must be "one 
demnition horrid grind," executed "Sweet Home" 
in a manner that went entirely home to the heart of 
at least one of his accidental audience. 



C933 



MARSEILLES, LYONS, AND 
AIX IN SAVOY 

IF the people of Marseilles do not love the Em- 
peror of the French, they ought to be ashamed 
of themselves. He has so completely changed the 
aspect of that city by his improvements, that the man 
who knows it as it existed in the reign of Louis Phi- 
lippe, would be lost if he were to revisit it now. The 
completion of the railway from Paris to Marseilles 
is an inestimable advantage to the latter city, while 
the new port, in magnitude and style of execution, is 
worthy of comparison with the splendid docks of 
London and Liverpool. The flags of every civilized 
nation may be seen there; and the variety of cos- 
tumes and languages, which bewilder one's eyes and 
ears, assure him that he is in the commercial metrop- 
olis of the Mediterranean. The frequency of steam 
communication between Marseilles and the various 
ports of Spain, Italy, Africa, and the Levant, draws 
to it a large proportion of the travellers in those 
directions. I believe that Marseilles is only cele- 
brated for having been colonized by the Phocaeans, 
or some such people, for having several times been 
devastated by the plague, and for having been very 
perfectly described by Dickens in his Little Dorrit. 
The day on which I arrived there was very like the 
one described by Dickens; so if any one would like 

C94] 



MARSEILLES, LYONS, AND AIX IN SAVOY 

further particulars, he had better overhaul his Little 
Dorrit, and, "when found, make note of it." 

The day after my arrival I saw a grand religious 
procession in the streets of the city. The landlady 
of my hotel had told me of it, but my expectations 
were not raised very high, for I thought that after 
the grandeur of Rome, all other things in that way 
would be comparatively tame. But I was mistaken; 
the procession fairly rivalled those of Rome. There 
were the same gorgeous vestments, the same pic- 
turesque groupings of black robes and snowy sur- 
plices, of mitres and crosiers and shaven crowns, of 
scarlet and purple and cloth of gold, the same swing- 
ing censers and clouds of fragrant incense, the same 
swelling flood of almost supernatural music. The 
municipal authorities of the city, with the staff of the 
garrison, joined in the procession, and the military 
display was such as can hardly be seen out of France. 
I have often been struck with the facility with which 
the Catholic religion adapts itself to the character of 
every nation. I have had some opportunity of obser- 
vation; I have seen the Catholic Church on three out 
of the four continents, and have every where noticed 
the same phenomenon. Mahometanism could never 
be transplanted to the snowy regions of Russia or 
Norway; it needs the soft, enervating atmosphere of 
Asia to keep it alive; the veranda, the bubbling foun- 
tain, the noontide repose, are all parts of it. Puri- 
tanism is the natural growth of a country where the 
sun seldom shines, and which is shut out by a barrier 
of water and fog from kindly intercourse with its 
neighbours. It could never thrive in the bright 
south. The merry vine-dressers of Italy could never 

C95 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

draw down their faces to the proper length, and 
would be very unwilling to exchange their blithesome 
canzonetti for Sternhold and Hopkins's version. 
But the Catholic Church, while it unites its profes- 
sors in the belief of the same inflexible creed, leaves 
them entirely free in all mere externals and national 
peculiarities. When I see the light-hearted French- 
man, the fiery Italian, the serious Spaniard, the cun- 
ning Greek, the dignified Armenian, the energetic 
Russian, the hard-headed Dutchman, the philosoph- 
ical German, the formal and "respectable" Eng- 
lishman, the thrifty Scotchman, the careless and 
warm-hearted Irishman, and the calculating, go- 
ahead American, all bound together by the profes- 
sion of the same faith, and yet retaining their 
national characteristics, — I can compare it to nothing 
but to a similar phenomenon that we may notice in 
the prism, which, while it is a pure and perfect crys- 
tal, is found on examination to contain, in their per- 
fection, all the various colours of the rainbow. 

The terminus of the Lyons and Mediterranean 
Railway is one of the best things of its kind in the 
world. I wish that some of our American railway 
directors could take a few lessons from the French. 
The attention paid to securing the comfort and 
safety of the passengers and the regularity of the 
trains would quite bewilder him. Instead of finding 
the station a long, unfinished kind of shed, with two 
small, beastly waiting rooms at one side, and a 
stand for a vender of apples, root beer, and newspa- 
pers, he would see a fine stone structure, several 
hundred feet in length, with a roof of iron and glass. 
He would enter a hall which would remind him of 

C963 



MARSEILLES, LYONS, AND AIX IN SAVOY 

the Doric hall of the State House in Boston, only 
that it is several times larger, and is paved with 
marble. He would choose out of the three ticket 
offices of the three classes, where he would ride, and 
he would be served with a promptness and politeness 
that would remind him of Mr. Child in the palmy 
days of the old Tremont Theatre, while he would 
notice that an officer stood by each ticket office to see 
that every purchaser got his ticket and the proper 
change, and to give all necessary information. Hav- 
ing booked his luggage, he would be ushered into one 
of the three waiting rooms, all of them furnished 
in a style of neatness and elegance that would greatly 
astonish him. He might employ the interval in the 
study of geography, assisted by a map painted on one 
side of the room, giving the entire south of France 
and Piedmont, with the railways, &c, and executed 
in such a style that the names of the towns are legible 
at a distance of fifteen or twenty feet. Two or three 
minutes before the hour fixed for the starting of the 
train, the door would be opened, and he would take 
his seat in the train with the other passengers. The 
whole affair would go on so systematically, with such 
an absence of noise and excitement, that he would 
doubt whether he had been in a railway station at all, 
until he found himself spinning along at a rapid rate, 
through long tunnels, and past the beautiful pano- 
rama of Provengal landscape. 

The sun was as bright as it always is in fair 
Provence, the sky as blue. The white dusty roads 
wound around over the green landscape, like great 
serpents seeking to hide their folds amid those hills. 
The almond, the lemon, and the fig attracted the at- 

C973 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

tendon of the traveller from the north, before all 
other trees,— not to forget however, the pale foliage 
of that tree which used to furnish wreaths for Mi- 
nerva's brow, but now supplies us with oil for our 
salads. Aries, with its old amphitheatre (a broken 
shadow of the Coliseum) looming up above it, lay 
stifled with dust and broiling in the sun, as we hurried 
on towards Avignon. It does not take much time to 
see that old city, which, from being so long the abode 
of the exiled popes, seems to have caught and re- 
tained something of the quiet dignity and repose of 
Rome itself. That gloomy old palace of the popes, 
with its lofty turrets, seems to brood over the town, 
and weigh it down as with sorrow for its departed 
greatness. Centuries have passed, America has been 
discovered, the whole face of Europe has changed, 
since a pontiff occupied those halls ; and yet there it 
stands, a monument commemorating a mere episode 
in the history of the see of St. Peter. 

Arriving at Lyons, I found another palatial sta- 
tion, on even a grander scale than that of Marseilles. 
The architect has worked the coats of arms of the 
different cities of France into the stone work of the 
exterior in a very effective manner. Lyons bears 
witness, no less than Marseilles, to the genius of the 
wonderful man who now governs France. It is a 
popular notion in England and America, that the 
enterprise of Napoleon III. has been confined to the 
improvement of Paris. If persons who labour under 
this error would extend their journeyings a little be- 
yond the ordinary track of a summer excursion, they 
would find that there is scarcely a town in the empire 
that has not felt the influence of his skill as a states- 

C98] 



MARSEILLES, LYONS, AND AIX IN SAVOY 

man and political economist. The Rue Imperiale of 
Lyons is a monument of which any sovereign might 
be justly proud. The activity of Lyons, the new 
buildings rising on every side, and its look of pros- 
perity, would lead one to suppose that it was some 
place that had just been settled, instead of a city 
with twenty centuries of history. The Sunday, I was 
glad to see, was well observed; perhaps not exactly 
in the style which Aminadab Sleek would commend, 
but in a very rational, Christian, un-Jewish manner. 
The shops were, for the most part, closed, the 
churches were crowded with people, and in the after- 
noon and evening the entire population was abroad 
enjoying itself— and a cleaner, better-behaved, hap- 
pier-looking set of people I never saw. The exces- 
sive heat still continues. It is now more than two 
months since I opened my umbrella ; the prospects of 
the harvest are good, but they are praying hard in 
the churches for a little rain. During my stay at 
Lyons, I lived almost entirely on fresh figs, and 
plums and ices. How full the cafes were those sultry 
evenings! How busy must the freezers have been 
in the cellars below ! I read through all the newspa- 
pers I could lay my hands on, and then amused 
myself with watching the gay, chattering throng 
around me. How my mind flew across the ocean 
that evening to a quiet back parlour at the South 
End! I could see the venerable Baron receiving a 
guest on such a night as that, and making the weather 
seem cool by contrast with the warmth of his hos- 
pitality. I could see him offering to his perspiring 
visitor a release from the slavery of broadcloth, in 
the loan of a nankeen jacket, and then busying him- 

[99] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

self in the preparation of a compound of old Co- 
chituate, (I had almost said old Jamaica,) of ice, of 
sugar, yea, of lemons, and commending the grateful 
chalice to the parched lips of his guest. Such an 
evening in the Baron's back parlour is the very 
ecstasy of hospitality. It is many months since that 
old nankeen jacket folded me in its all-embracing 
arms, but the very thought of it awakes a thrill of 
pleasure in my heart. When I last saw it, "decay's 
effacing fingers" had meddled with the buttons 
thereof, and it was growing a trifle consumptive in 
the vicinity of the elbows ; but I hope that it is good 
for many a year of usefulness yet, before the epitaph 
writer shall commence the recital of its merits with 
those melancholy words, Hie jacetf Pardon me, 
dear reader, for this digression from the recital of 
my wanderings; but this jacket, the remembrance of 
which is so dear to me, is not the trifle it may seem 
to you. It is, I believe, the only institution in the 
world of the same age and importance, which has 
not been apostrophized in verse by that gifted bard, 
Mr. Martin Farquhar Tupper. If this be not celeb- 
rity, what is it ? 

In one of the narrow streets of Lyons I found a 
barber named Melnotte. He was a man somewhat 
advanced in life, and I feel sure that he addressed a 
good-looking woman in a snowy white cap, who 
looked in from a back room while I was having my 
hair cut, as Pauline. Be that as it may, when he had 
finished his work, and I walked up to the mirror to 
inspect it, he addressed to me the language of Bul- 
wer's hero, "Do you like the picture?" or words to 
that effect. I cannot help mistrusting that Sir Ed- 

Doo] 



MARSEILLES, LYONS, AND AIX IN SAVOY 

ward may have misled us concerning the ultimate 
history of the Lady of Lyons and her husband. But 
the heat was too intolerable for human endurance; 
so I packed up, and leaving that fair city, with its 
numerous graceful bridges, and busy looms whose 
fabrics brighten the eyes of the beauties of Europe 
and America, and lighten the purses of their chiv- 
alry,— leaving Our Lady of Fourvieres looking 
down with outstretched hands from the dome of her 
lofty shrine, and watching over her faithful Lyon- 
nese,— I turned my face towards the Alpine regions. 
The Alps have always been to me what Australia 
was to the late Mr. Micawber— "the bright dream 
of my youth, and the fallacious aspiration of my 
riper years." I remember when I was young, long 
before the days of railways and steamers, in the 
times when a man who had travelled in Europe was 
invested with a sort of awful dignity— I remember 
hearing a travelled uncle of mine tell about the Alps, 
and I resolved, with all the enthusiasm of boyhood, 
thenceforward to u save up" all my Fourth of July 
and Artillery Election money, until I should be able 
to go and see one. When the Rev. James Sheridan 
Knowles (he was a wicked playactor in those days) 
produced his drama of William Tell, how it fed the 
flame of my ambition ! How I longed to stand with 
the hero once again among his native hills ! How I 
loved the glaciers ! How I doted on the avalanches ! 
But age has cooled the longings of my heart for 
mountain excursions, and robbed my legs of all their 
climbing powers, so that if it depends upon my own 
bodily exertions, the Vale of Chamouni will be en- 
tirely unavailable for me, and every mount will be to 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

me a blank. The scenery along the line of railway 
from Amberieu to Culoz on the Rhone is very grand. 
The ride reminded me of the ride over the Atlantic 
and St. Lawrence road through the White Moun- 
tains, only it is finer. The boldness of the cliffs and 
precipices was something to make one's heart beat 
quick, and cause him to wonder how the peasants 
could work so industriously, and the cattle feed so 
constantly, without stopping to look up at the mag- 
nificence that hemmed them in. 

At Culoz I went on board one of those peculiar 
steamers of the Rhone— about one hundred and 
fifty feet in length by ten or twelve in width. Our 
way lay through a narrow and circuitous branch of 
the river for several miles. The windings of the 
river were such that men were obliged to turn the 
boat about by means of cables, which they made fast 
to posts fixed in the banks on either side for that pur- 
pose. The scenery along the banks was like a dream 
of Paradise. To say that the country was smiling 
with flowers and verdure does not express it— it was 
bursting into a broad grin of fertility. Such vine- 
yards ! Not like the grape vine in your back yard, 
dear reader, nailed up against a brick wall, but large, 
luxuriant vines, seeming at a loss what to do with 
themselves, and festooned from tree to tree, just as 
you see them in the scenery of Fra Diavolo. And 
then there were groups of people in costumes of pic- 
turesque negligence, and women in large straw hats, 
and dresses of brilliant colours, just like the chorus 
of an opera. The deep, rich hue of the foliage par- 
ticularly attracted my notice. It was as different 
from the foliage of New England as Winship's Gar- 

C1023 



MARSEILLES, LYONS, AND AIX IN SAVOY 
dens are from an invoice of palm-leaf hats. Beyond 
the immediate vicinity of the river rose up beautiful 
hills and cliffs like the Palisades of the Hudson. Let 
those who will, prefer the wild grandeur of our 
American mountain scenery; there is a great charm 
for me in the union of nature and art. The careful 
cultivation of the fields seems to set off and render 
more grand and austere the gray, jagged cliffs that 
overlook them. As the elder Pliny most justly re- 
marks, (lib. iv. cap. xi. 24,) "It requires the lemon 
as well as the sugar to make the punch." 

After about an hour's sail upon the river, we came 
out upon the beautiful Lake of Bourget. It was 
stirred by a gentle breeze, but it seemed as if its 
bright blue surface had never reflected a cloud. All 
around its borders the trees and vines seemed bend- 
ing down to drink of its pure waters. Far off in the 
distance rose up the mighty peaks of the Alps- their 
snow-white tops contrasting with the verdure of their 
sides. They seemed to be watching with pleasure 
over the glad scenes beneath them, like old men 
whose gray hairs have been, powerless to disturb the 
youthful freshness and geniality of their hearts. 

At St. Innocent I landed, and underwent the cus- 
tom house formalities attendant upon entrance into 
a new territory. The officials were very expeditious, 
and equally polite. I at first supposed that the letters 
V. Ji., which each of them bore conspicuously on his 
cap, meant "very etnpty,"-but it afterwards oc- 
curred tome that they were the initials of his maj- 

fu ty «T.. e g ° f Sardinia - A few minutes' ride over 
the Victor Emmanuel Railway" brought me to the 
beautiful village of Aix. It is situated, as my friend 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

the Lyonnese barber would say, in "a deep vale shut 
out by Alpine hills from the rude world." It pos- 
sesses about 2500 inhabitants; but that number is 
considerably augmented at present, for the mineral 
springs of Aix are very celebrated, and this is the 
height of "the season." There is a great deal of 
what is called "society" here, and during the morn- 
ing the baths are crowded. It is as dull as all water- 
ing places necessarily are, and twice as hot. I think 
that the French manage these things better than we 
do in America. There is less humbug, less display of 
jewelry and dress, and a vast deal more of common 
sense and solid comfort than with us. The cafes are 
like similar establishments in all such places— an 
abundance of ices and ordinary coffee, and a plentiful 
lack of newspapers. I have found a companion, 
however, who more than makes good the latter defi- 
ciency. He is an Englishman of some seventy years, 
who is here bathing for his gout. His light hair and 
fresh complexion disguise his age so completely that 
most people, when they see us together, judge me, 
from my gray locks, to be the elder. He is one of the 
most entertaining persons I have ever met — he knows 
the classics by heart,— is familiar with English, 
French, Italian, German, and Spanish literature, — 
speaks nine languages, — and has travelled all over 
the world. He is as familiar with the Steppes of 
Tartary as with Wapping Old Stairs,— has imbibed 
sherbet in Damascus and sherry cobblers in New 
York, and seen a lion hunt in South Africa. But his 
heart is the heart of a boy— "age cannot wither nor 
custom stale" its infinite geniality. He cannot pass 
by a beggar without making an investment for eter- 

Cio4 3 



MARSEILLES, LYONS, AND AIX IN SAVOY 

nity, and all the babies look over the shoulders of 
their nurses to smile at him as he walks the streets. 
I mention him here for the sake of recording one of 
his opinions, which struck me by its truth and orig- 
inality. We were sitting in a cafe last evening, and, 
after a long conversation, I asked him what he 
should give as the result of all his reading and ob- 
servation of men and things, and all his experience, 
if he were to sum it up in one sentence. "Sir," said 
he, removing his meerschaum from his mouth, and 
turning towards me as if to give additional force to 
his reply, "it may all be comprised in this : the world 
is composed of two classes of men— natural fools 
and d— d fools; the first class are those who have 
never made any pretensions, or have reached a just 
appreciation of the nothingness of all human acquire- 
ments and hopes ; the second are those whose belief 
in their own infallibility has never been disturbed; 
and this class includes a vast number of every rank, 
from the profound German philosopher, who thinks 
that he has fathomed infinity, down to that young 
fop twirling his moustache at the opposite table, and 
flattering himself that he is making a great impres- 
sion." 

Savoy, as every body knows, was once a part of 
France, and it still retains all of its original charac- 
teristics. I have not heard ten words of Italian since 
I arrived here, and, judging from what I do hear and 
from the tone of the newspapers, it would like to 
become a part of France again. The Savoyards are 
a religious, steady-going people, and they have little 
love either for the weak and dissolute monarch who 
governs them, or for the powerful, infidel prime min' 

Dos] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

ister who governs their monarch. The high-pitched 
roofs of the houses here are suggestive of the snows 
of winter; but the heat reminds me of the coast of 
Africa during a sirocco. How true is Sydney 
Smith's remark, "Man only lives to shiver or per- 
spire" 1 The thermometer ranges any where from 
8o° to 90 . Can this be the legitimate temperature 
of these mountainous regions? I am "ill at these 
numbers," and nothing would be so invigorating to 
my infirm and shaky frame as a sniff of the salt 
breezes of Long Branch or Nantasket. 



Do6] 



AIX TO PARIS 

THERE is no need of telling how disgusted I 
became with Aix-les-Bains and all that in it is, 
after a short residence there. How I hated those 
straw-hatted people who beset the baths from the 
earliest flush of the aurora ! How I detested those 
fellows who were constantly pestering me with offers 
(highly advantageous, without doubt) of donkeys 
whereon to ride, when they knew that I did n't want 
one! How I abominated the sight of a man (who 
seemed to haunt me) in a high velvet-collared coat 
and a bell-crowned hat just overtopping an oily-look- 
ing head of hair and bushy whiskers— who looked, 
for all the world, as if he were made up for Sir Har- 
court Courtly! How maliciously he held on to the 
newspapers in the cafe! How constantly he sat 
there and devoured all the news out of them through 
the medium of a double tortoise-shell eye-glass, 
which always seemed to be just falling off his nose ! 
How I abhorred the sight of those waiters, who 
looked as if the season were a short one, and time 
(as B. Franklin said) was money ! How stifling was 
the atmosphere of that "seven-by-nine" room for 
which I had to pay so dearly! How hot, how dusty, 
how dull it was, I need not weary you by telling; 
suffice it to say, that I never packed my trunk more 
willingly than when I left that village. I am very 
glad to have been there, however, for the satisfac- 

Do73 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

tion I felt at leaving the place is worth almost any 
effort to obtain. The joy of departure made even 
the exorbitant bills seem reasonable; and when I 
thought of the stupidity and discomfort I was escap- 
ing from, I felt as if, come what might, my future 
could only be one of sunshine and content. Aix-les- 
Bains is one of the pleasantest places to leave that I 
have ever seen. I can never forget the measureless 
happiness of seeing my luggage ticketed for Paris, 
and then taking my seat with the consciousness that 
I was leaving Aix (not aches, alas!) behind me. 

The Lake of Bourget was as beautiful and smiling 
as before— only it did seem as if the sun might have 
held in a little. He scorched and blistered the pas- 
sengers on that steamboat in the most absurd man- 
ner. He seemed never to have heard of Horace, 
and was consequently entirely ignorant of the pro- 
priety of maintaining a modus in his rebuses. The 
scenery along the banks of the Rhone had not 
changed in the least, but was as romantic and the- 
atrical as ever. At Culoz I was glad to get on shore, 
for like Hamlet, I had been "too much i' the sun"; 
so I left the "blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone," 
(which the late Lord Byron, with his usual disregard 
of truth, talks about, and which is as muddy as a 
Medford brick-yard,) and took refuge in the hos- 
pitality of a custom house. Here I fell into a medi- 
tation upon custom house officers. I wonder whether 
the custom house officers of France are in their 
leisure hours given to any of the vanities which de- 
light their American brethren. There was one lean, 
thoughtful-looking man among those at Culoz who 
attracted my attention. I tried ineffectually to make 



AIX TO PARIS 

out his bent from his physiognomy. I could not 
imagine him occupying his leisure by putting any 
twice-told tales on paper— or cultivating Shanghai 
poultry — or riding on to the tented field amid the 
roar of artillery at the head of a brigade of militia, 
—and I was obliged, in the hurry of the examination 
of luggage, to give him up. 

I had several times, during the journey from Aix, 
noticed a tall, eagle-eyed man, in a suit of gray, and 
wearing a moustache of the same colour, and while 
we were waiting for the train at Culoz, I observed 
that he attracted a great deal of attention : his bear- 
ing was so commanding, that I had set him down as 
being connected with the military interest, before I 
noticed that he did not bear arms, for the left sleeve 
of his coat hung empty and useless by his side ; so I 
ventured to inquire concerning him, and learned that 
I was a fellow-traveller of Marshal Baraguay d'Hil- 
liers. I must do him the justice to say that he did not 
look like a man who would leave his arms on the 
field. 

We were soon whirling, and puffing, and whistling 
along through the tame but pleasing landscape of 
France. Those carefully-tilled fields, those vine- 
yards almost overflowing with the raw material of 
conviviality, those interminable rows of tall trees 
which seem to give no shade, those farm-houses, 
whose walls we should in America consider strong 
enough for fortifications, those contented-looking 
cattle, those towns that seem to consist of a single 
street and an old gray tower, with a dark-coloured 
conical top, like a candle extinguisher, — all had a 
good, familiar look to me ; and the numerous fields 

£109] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

of Indian corn almost made me think that I was on 
my way to Worcester or Fitchburg. I stopped for a 
while at Macon, ( a town which I respect for its con- 
tributions to the good cheer of the world,) and 
hugely enjoyed a walk through its clean, quiet streets. 
While I was waiting at the station, the express train 
from Paris came along; and many of the passengers 
left their places (like Mr. Squeers) to stretch their 
legs. Among them was a man whose acquisitive eye, 
black satin waistcoat, fashionable hat, (such as no 
man but an American would think of travelling in,) 
and coat with the waist around his hips, and six or 
eight inches of skirt, immediately fixed my attention. 
Before I thought, he had asked me if I could speak 
English. I set him at his ease by answering that I 
took lessons in it once when I was young, and he 
immediately launched out as follows: "Well, this is 
the cussedest language I ever did hear. I don't see 
how in the devil these blasted fools can have lived so 
long right alongside of England without trying to 
learn the English language." The whistle of the 
engine cut short the declaration of his sentiments, 
and he was whizzing on towards Lyons a moment 
after. Whoever that man may have been, he owes it 
to himself and his country to write a book. His 
work would be as worthy of consideration as the 
writings of two thirds of our English and American 
travellers, who think they are qualified to write about 
the government and social condition of a country 
because they have travelled through it. Fancy a 
Frenchman, entirely ignorant of the English tongue, 
landing at Boston, and stopping at the Tremont 
House or Parker's; he visits the State House, the 



AIX TO PARIS 

Athenaeum, Bunker Hill, the wharves, &c. Then on 
Sunday he wishes to know something about the re- 
ligion of these strange people; so he goes across the 
street to the King's Chapel, and finds that it is 
closed; so he walks down the street in the burning 
sun to Brattle Street, where he hears a comfortable, 
drony kind of sermon, which seems to have as com- 
posing an effect upon the fifty or a hundred persons 
who are present as upon himself. In the afternoon 
he finds his way to Trinity Church, (somebody hav- 
ing charitably told him that that is the most genteel 
place,) and there he hears "our admirable liturgy" 
sonorously read out to twenty or thirty people, all of 
whom are so engrossed in their devotions that the 
responses are entirely neglected. Having had 
enough of what the Irishman called the English leth- 
argy, he returns to his lodgings, and writes in his 
note-book that the Americans seldom go to church, 
and when they do, go there to sleep in comfortable 
pews. Then he makes a little tour of a fortnight to 
New Haven, Providence, Springfield, &c, and re- 
turns to France to write a book of travels in New 
England. And what are all his observations worth? 
I'll tell you. They are worth just as much, and give 
exactly as faithful a representation of the state of 
society in New England, as four fifths of the books 
written by English and American travellers in 
France, Spain, and Italy, do of the condition of 
those countries. 

I have encountered many interesting studies of 
humanity here on the continent in my day. I have 
met many people who have come abroad with a 
vague conviction that travel improves one, and who 

Cm] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

do not see that to visit Europe without some prepa- 
ration is like going a-fishing without line or bait. 
They appear to think that some great benefit is to be 
obtained by passing over a certain space of land and 
water, and being imposed upon to an unlimited ex- 
tent by a horde of commissionnaires , ciceroni, couri- 
ers, and others, who find in their ignorance and lack 
of common sense a source of wealth. I met, the 
other day, a gentleman from one of the Western 
States, who said that he was "putting up" at 
Meurice's Hotel, but didn't think much of it; if it 
had not been for some English people whom he fell 
in with on the way from Calais, he should have gone 
to the Hotel de Ville, which he supposed, from the 
pictures he had seen, must be a u fust class house" ! I 
have within a few hours seen an American, who could 
not ask the simplest question in French, but thinks 
that he shall stop three or four weeks, and learn the 
language! I have repeatedly met people who told 
me that they had come out to Europe "jest to see the 
place." But it is not alone such ignoramuses as these 
who merit the pity or contempt of the judicious and 
sensible. Their folly injures no one but themselves. 
The same cannot be said; however, of the authors of 
the numerous duodecimos of foreign travel which 
burden the booksellers' counters. They have sup- 
posed that they can sketch a nation's character by 
looking at its towns from the windows of an express 
train. They presume to write about the social life 
of France or Italy, while they are ignorant of any 
language but their own, and do not know a single 
French or Italian family. Victims of a bitter preju- 
dice against those countries and their institutions, 

[Ha] 



AIX TO PARIS 

they are prepared beforehand to be shocked and dis- 
gusted at all they see. Like Sterne's Smelfungus, 
they "set out with the spleen and jaundice, and every 
object they pass by is discoloured or distorted." 
Kenelm Digby wisely remarks that one of the great 
advantages of journeying beyond sea, to a man of 
sense and feeling, is the spectacle of general travel- 
lers: "it will prevent his being ever again imposed 
upon by these birds of passage, when they record 
their adventures and experience on returning to the 
north." 

Dijon is a fine old city. Every body knows that 
it used to be the capital of Burgundy, but to the gen- 
eral reader it is more particularly interesting as being 
the place to which Mrs. Dombey and Mr. Carker 
fled after the elopement. There is a fine cathedral 
and public library, and the whole place has an emi- 
nently Burgundian flavour which makes one regret 
that he got tired so soon when he tried to read Frois- 
sart's Chronicles. There is a church there which 
was desecrated during the old revolution, and is now 
used as a market-house. It bears an inscription 
which presents a satirical commentary on its recent 
history: "Domine, dilexi decor em domus tua!" The 
Dijon gingerbread (which the people, in their ig- 
norance and lack of our common school advantages, 
call pain d'epice) would really merit a diploma from 
that academy of connoisseurs, the Massachusetts 
House of Representatives. But Dombey and Dijon 
are all forgotten in our first glimpse of the "gay 
capital of bewildering France." There lay Paris, 
sparkling under the noonday sun. The sight of its 
domes and monuments awoke all my fellow-travel- 

C»33 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

lers : shabby caps and handkerchiefs were exchanged 
for hats and bonnets, which gave their wearers an 
air of respectability perfectly uncalled for. We were 
soon inside the fortifications, which have been so 
outgrown by the city that one hardly notices them; 
and, after the usual luggage examination, I found 
myself in an omnibus, and once more on the Boule- 
vards. 

And what a good, comfortable home-feeling it 
was ! There were the old, familiar streets, the well- 
known advertisements, painted conspicuously, in 
blue, and green, and gold, on what would else have 
been a blank, unsightly wall, and inviting me to pur- 
chase cloths and cashmeres; there were the same 
ceaseless tides of life ebbing and flowing through 
those vast thoroughfares, the same glossy beavers, 
the same snowy caps and aprons, the same blouses, 
the same polite, s'il vous-plait, pardon, m'sieur, take- 
it-easy air, that Paris, as seen from an omnibus win- 
dow, always presents. We rolled through the Rue 
St. Antoine, and it was hard to realize that it had 
ever been the theatre of so much appalling history. 
I tried to imagine the barricades, the street ploughed 
up by artillery, and that heroic martyr, Archbishop 
Afire, falling there, and praying that his blood might 
be the last shed in that fratricidal strife; but it was 
useless; the lively present made the past seem but 
the mere invention of the historian. All traces of 
the frightful scenes of 1848 have been effaced, and 
the facilities for barricades have been disposed of in 
a way that must make red republicanism very disre- 
spectful to the memory of MacAdam. As we passed 
a church in that bloody locality, a wedding party 



AIX TO PARIS 

came out; the bridegroom looked as if he had taken 
chloroform to enable him to get through his difficul- 
ties, and the effect of it had not entirely passed off. 
The bride (for women, you know, have greater 
power of endurance than men) seemed to take it 
more easily, and, beaming in the midst of a sort of 
wilderness of lace, and gauze, and muslin, like a 
lighthouse in a fog, she tripped briskly into the car- 
riage, with a bouquet in her hand, and happiness in 
her heart. Before the bridal party got fairly out of 
sight, a funeral came along. The white pall showed 
that it was a child who slept upon the bier; for the 
Catholic church does not mourn over those who are 
removed from the temptations of life before they 
have known them. The vehicles all gave way to let 
the little procession pass, the hum seemed to cease 
for a moment, every head was uncovered, even the 
porter held his burden on his shoulder with one hand 
that he might pay his respects to that sovereign to 
whom even republicans are obliged to bow, and the 
many-coloured hats of the omnibus drivers were 
doffed. I had often before noticed those striking 
contrasts that one sees in a capital like Paris ; but to 
meet such a one at my very entrance impressed me 
deeply. Such is Paris. You think it the liveliest 
place in the world, (and so it is;) but suddenly you 
come upon something that makes you thoughtful, if 
it does not sadden you. Life and death elbow and 
jostle each other along these gay streets, until it 
seems as if they were rivals striving to drive each 
other out. I entered a church a day or two since. 
There was a funeral at the high altar. The black 
vestments and hangings, the lighted tapers, the sol- 

Cn53 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

emn chant of the De profundis were eloquent of 
death and what must follow it. I was startled by 
hearing a child's cry, and looking round into the 
chapel which served as a baptistery, there stood two 
young mothers who had just received their infants 
from that purifying laver which made them members 
of the great Christian family. I never before had 
that beautiful thought of Chateaubriand's so forced 
upon me— "Religion has rocked us in the cradle of 
life, and her maternal hand shall close our eyes, 
while her holiest melodies soothe us to rest in the 
cradle of death." 

There are, without doubt, many persons, who can 
say that in their pilgrimage of life they have truly 
"found their warmest welcome at an inn." My ex- 
perience outstrips that, for I have received one of 
my most cordial greetings in a cafe. The establish- 
ment in question is so eminently American, that I 
should feel as if I had neglected a sacred duty, if I 
did not describe it, for the benefit of future sojourn- 
ers in the French capital, who are hereby requested 
to overhaul their memorandum books and make a 
note of it. It does not boast the magnificence and 
luxury of the Cafe de Paris, Very's, the Trots Freres 
Provencaux, nor of Taylor's; nor does it thrust it- 
self forward into the publicity of the gay Boule- 
vards, or of the thronged arcades of the Palais 
Royal. It does not appeal to those who love the 
noise and dust of fashion's highway; for them it has 
no welcome. But to those who love "the cool, 
sequestered path of life," it offers a degree of quiet 
comfort, to which the "slaves of passion, avarice, 
and pride," who view themselves in the mirrors of 

Di6] 



AIX TO PARIS 

the Maison Doree, are strangers. You turn from 
the Boulevard des Italiens into the Rue de la Micho- 
diere, which you perambulate until you come to num- 
ber six, where you will stop and take an observation. 
Perhaps wonder will predominate over admiration. 
The front of the establishment does not exceed 
twelve feet in width, and the sign over the door 
shows that it is a Cremerie. The fact is also adum- 
brated symbolically by a large brass can, which is set 
over the portal. In one of the windows may be 
observed a neatly-executed placard, to this effect:— 

Aux Americains 
Specialite. 



Pumpkin Pie. 

"Enter— its vastness overwhelms thee not!" On 
the contrary, having passed through the little front 
shop, you stand in a room ten or twelve feet square 
—just the size of Washington Irving' s "empire," in 
the Red Horse Inn, at Stratford. This little room 
is furnished with two round tables, a sideboard, and 
several chairs, and is decorated with numerous 
crayon sketches of the knights of the aforesaid round 
tables. You make the acquaintance of the excellent 
Madame Busque, and order your dinner, which is 
served promptly and with a motherly care, which 
will at first remind you of the time when your bib 
was carefully tied on, and you were lifted to a seat 
on the family Bible, which had been placed on a 
chair, to bring the juvenile mouth into proper rela- 
tions with the table. 

C»7] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

Nothing can surpass the home feeling that took 
possession of me when I found myself once more in 
Madame Busque's little back room at No. 6, Rue de 
la Michodiere. How cordial was that estimable 
lady's welcome ! She made herself as busy as a cat 
with one chicken, and prepared for me a "tired 
nature's sweet restorer" in the shape of one of her 
famous omelets. The old den had not changed in 
the least. Madame Busque used to threaten occa- 
sionally to paint it, and otherwise improve and em- 
bellish it ; but we always told her that if she did any 
thing of that kind, or tried to render it less dingy, or 
snug, or unpretending, we would never eat another 
of her pumpkin pies. Not all the mirrors and mag- 
nificence of the resorts of fashion can equal the quiet 
cosiness of Madame Busque's back room. You meet 
all kinds of company there. The blouse is at home 
there, as well as its ambitious cousin, the broadcloth 
coat. Law and medicine, literature and art, pleasure 
and honest toil, meet there upon equal terms. Our 
own aristocratic Washington never dreamed of such 
a democracy as his calm portrait looks down upon in 
that room. Then we have such a delightful neigh- 
bourhood there. I feel as if the charcoal woman of 
the next door but one below was some relation to me 
— at least an aunt; she always has a pleasant word 
and a smile for the frequenters of No. 6 ; and then it 
is so disinterested on her part, for we can none of us 
need any of her charcoal. I hope that no person 
who reads this will be misled by it, and go to Ma- 
dame Busque's cremerie expecting to find there the 
variety which the restaurants boast, for he will be 



AIX TO PARIS 

disappointed. But he will find every thing there of 
the best description. My taste in food (as in most 
other matters) is a very catholic one: I can eat beef 
with the English, garlic and onions with the French, 
sauerkraut with the Germans, macaroni with the 
Italians, pilaf with the Turks, baked beans with the 
Yankees, hominy with the southerners, and oysters 
with any body. But as I feel age getting the better 
of me day by day, I think I grow to be more and 
more of a pre-Raphaelite in these things. So I crave 
nothing more luxurious than a good steak or chop, 
with the appropriate vegetables ; and these are to be 
had in their perfection at Madame Busque's. My 
benison upon her! 

The canicular weather I suffered from in the south 
followed me even here. I found every body talking 
about the extraordinary chaleur. Shade of John 
Rogers! how the sun has glared down upon Paris, 
day after day, without winking, until air-tight stoves 
are refrigerators compared to it, and even old-fash- 
ioned preaching is outdone ! How the asphalte side- 
walks of the Boulevards have melted under his rays, 
and perfumed the air with any thing but a Sabaean 
odour! The fragrance of the linden trees was en- 
tirely overpowered. The thought of the helmets of 
the cavalry was utterly intolerable. Tortoni's and 
the cafes were crowded. Great was the clamour for 
ices. Greater still was the rush to the cool shades of 
the public gardens, or the environs of Bougival and 
Marly. At last, the welcome rain came hissing down 
upon these heated roofs; and malheur to the man 
who ventures out during these days without his urn- 

C"93 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

brella. It has been a rain of terror. It almost spoilt 
the great national fete of the 15th; but the people 
made the best of it, and, between the free theatrical 
performances at sixteen theatres, the superb illumi- 
nations, and the fireworks, seemed to have a very 
merry time. I went in the morning to that fine lofty 
old church, (whose Lady Chapel is a splendid monu- 
ment of Couture's artistic genius,) St. Eustache, 
where I heard a new mass, by one M. L'Hote. It 
was well executed, and the orchestral parts were par- 
ticularly effective. After the mass, the annual Te 
Deum for the Emperor was sung. The effect of the 
latter was very grand; indeed, when it was finished, 
I was just thinking that it was impossible for music 
to surpass it, when the full orchestra and two organs 
united in a burst of harmony that almost lifted me 
off my feet. I recognized the old Gregorian anthem 
that is sung every Sunday in all the churches, and 
when it had been played through, the trumpets took 
up the air of the chant, above the rest of the accom- 
paniment, and the clear, alto voice of one of those 
scarlet-capped choir-boys rang out the words, Do- 
mine, salvum fac imperatorem nostrum, Napoleo- 
nem, in a way that seemed to make those old arches 
vibrate, and wonderfully quickened the circulation in 
the veins of every listener. It was like the gradual 
mounting and heaving up of a high sea in a storm 
on the Atlantic, which, when it has reached a pitch 
you thought impossible, curls majestically over, and, 
breaking into a creamy foam, loses itself in a tran- 
sitory vision of emerald brilliancy, that for the 
moment realizes the most gorgeous and improbable 
fables of Eastern luxury. It made even me, not- 

[120 ] 



AIX TO PARIS 

withstanding my prejudices in favour of republican- 
ism, forget the spread eagle, and my free (and 
easy) native land, and for several hours I found 
myself singing that solemn anthem over in a most 
impressive manner. Vive I'Empereur! 



Dai] 



PARIS 

THIS is a wonderful city. It seems to me, as I 
ride up and down the gay Boulevards on the 
roof of an omnibus, or gaze into the brilliant shop- 
windows of the Palais Royal, or watch the happy 
children in the garden of the Tuileries, or stand 
upon the bridges and take in as much as I can at once 
of gardens, palaces, and church towers— it seems to 
me like a great theatre, filled with gay company, to 
whom the same grand spectacle is always being 
shown, and whose faces always reflect something of 
that brilliancy which lights up the gorgeous, never- 
ending, last scene of the drama. I know that the 
play has its underplot of vicious poverty and crime, 
but they shrink from the glare of the footlights and 
the radiance of the red fire that lights up the scene. 
Taken in the abstract— taken as it appears from the 
outside— Paris is the most perfect whole the world 
can show. It was a witty remark of a well-known 
citizen of Boston, touching the materialistic views of 
many of his friends, that "when good Boston people 
die, they go to Paris." I know many whose highest 
idea of heaven would find its embodiment in the 
sunshine of the Place de la Concorde or the gas light 
of the Rue de Rivoli. Paris captivates you at once. 
In this it differs from Rome. You do not grow to 
love it; you feel its charms before you have recov- 
ered from the fatigue of your journey— before you 

CI22] 



PARIS 

have even reached your hotel, as you ride along and 
recognize the buildings and monuments which books 
and pictures have made familiar. In Rome all is 
different. Michel Angelo's mighty dome, to be sure, 
does impress you, as you come to the city ; but when 
you enter, the narrow streets are such a contrast to 
the broad, free campagna you have just left, that 
you feel oppressed and cramped as you ride through 
them. You find one of the old temples kept in re- 
pair and serving as a custom house ; this is a damper 
at the outset, and you sigh for something to revive 
the ancient customs of the world's capital. You 
walk into the Forum the next day, musing upon the 
line of the twelve Caesars, and your progress is ar- 
rested, and your sense of the dramatic unities of 
your position deeply wounded, by an unamusing and 
prosaic clothes-line. You keep on and try to recall 
Cicero, and Catiline, and Jugurtha, and Servius Tul- 
lius, and Brutus, and Virginius,— but it is useless, for 
you find a cow feeding there as quietly as if she were 
on the hills of Berkshire. The whole city seems sad 
and mouldy, and out of date, and you think you will 
"do the sights" as rapidly as possible, and then be 
off. But before many days you find that all is 
changed. The moss that clothes those broken walls 
becomes as venerable in your sight as the gray hairs 
upon your mother's brow; the ivy that enwreathes 
those old towers and columns seems to have wound 
itself around your heart and bound it forever to that 
spot. Clothes-lines, dirt, and all the inconveniences 
inseparable from the older civilization of Rome, 
fade away. The Forum, the Palace of the Caesars, 
the Appian Way, all become instinct with a new— 

D233 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

or rather with their old life; and you feel that you 
are in the Rome of Livy and Sallust,— you have 
found the Rome of which you dreamed in boyhood, 
and you are happy. With Paris, as I have said, you 
are not obliged to serve such an apprenticeship. You 
have read of Paris in history, in novels, in guide- 
books, in the lucubrations of the whole tribe of cor- 
respondents—you recognize it at once on seeing it, 
and accept it for all that it pretends to be. And you 
are not deceived. And this, I apprehend, is the 
reason why we never feel that deep, clinging affec- 
tion for Paris that we do for that "goddess of all the 
nations, to whom nothing is equal and nothing sec- 
ond"— that city which (as one of her prophet-poets 
said) shall ever be "the capital of the world, for 
whatever her arms have not conquered shall be hers 
by religion." You feel that Paris is the capital of 
Europe, and you bow before it as you would before 
a sovereign whose word was law. 

I wonder whether every body judges of all new 
things by the criterion of childhood, as I find myself 
constantly doing. Whatever it may be, I apply to it 
the test of my youthful recollections of something 
similar, and it almost always suffers by the process. 
Those beautiful architectural wonders that pierce 
the sky at Strasburg and Antwerp will bear no com- 
parison, in point of height, with the steeple of the 
Old South as it exists in the memory of my child- 
hood. I have never seen a picture gallery in Europe 
which awakened any thing like my old feelings on 
visiting one of the first Athenaeum exhibitions many 
years ago. Those wonderful productions of Horace 
Vernet, in which one may read the warlike history of 



PARIS 

France, are nothing compared to my recollections of 
Trumbull's "Sortie of Gibraltar,'' as seen through 
an antediluvian tin trumpet which considerably inter- 
fered with my vision, but which I thought it was 
necessary to use. I have visited libraries which ante- 
dated by centuries the discovery of America,— I 
have rambled over castles which seemed to reecho 
with the clank of armour and the clarion calls of the 
old days of chivalry,— I have walked through the 
long corridors and halls of the Vatican with cardi- 
nals and kings,— I have mused in church-crypts and 
cloisters, in whose silent shade the dead of a thou- 
sand years reposed,— but I have never yet been im- 
pressed with any thing like the awe which the old 
Athenaeum in Pearl Street used to inspire into my 
boyish heart. Pearl Street in those days was as 
innocent of traffic and its turmoil as the quiet roads 
around Jamaica Pond are now. A pasture, in which 
the Hon. Jonathan Phillips kept a cow, extended 
through to Oliver Street, and handsome old-fash- 
ioned private houses with gardens around them oc- 
cupied the place of the present rows of granite 
warehouses. The Athenaeum, surrounded by horse- 
chestnut trees, stood there in aristocratic dignity and 
repose, which it seemed almost sacrilegious to dis- 
turb with the noise of our childish sports. There 
were a few old gentlemen who used to frequent its 
reading-room, whose white hair, (and some of them 
even wore knee breeches and queues and powder,); 
always stilled our boyish clamour as we played on 
the grass-plots in the yard. To some of these old 
men our heads were often uncovered,— for children 
were politer in those days than now,— and to our 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

young imagination it seemed as if they were sages, 
who carried about with them an atmosphere of 
learning and the fragrance of academic groves. 
They seemed as much a part of the mysterious old 
establishment as the books in the library, the dusty 
busts in the entries, or the old librarian himself. 
Sometimes I used to venture into those still passages, 
and steal a look into that reading-room whose quiet 
was never broken, save by the wealthy creak of some 
old citizen's boots, or by the long breathing of some 
venerable frequenter of the place, enjoying his after- 
noon nap. In later years I came to know the 
Athenaeum more familiarly; the old gentlemen lost 
the character of sages and became estimable indi- 
viduals of quiet tastes, who were fatiguing the Mas- 
sachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company by 
their long-continued perusal of the Daily Advertiser 
and the Gentleman's Magazine ; but my old impres- 
sion of the awful mystery of the building remains to 
this day. I mourned over the removal to the present 
fine position, and I seek in vain amid the stucco-work 
and white paint of the new edifice for the charm 
which enthralled me in the old home of the institu- 
tion. Some people, carried away by the utilitarian 
spirit of the age, may think that it is a great improve- 
ment; but to me it seems nothing but an unwarrant- 
able innovation on the established order of things, 
and a change for the worse. Where is the quiet of 
the old place? Younger and less reverential men 
have risen up in the places of the old, and have de- 
stroyed all that rendered the old library respectable. 
The good old times when Dr. Bass, the librarian, sat 
on one side of the fireplace, and the late John Brom- 

£**1 



PARIS 

field (with his silk handkerchief spread over his 
knees) on the other, and read undisturbed for hours, 
have passed away. A hundred persons use the li- 
brary now for one who did then; and I am left to 
feed upon the memory of better times, when learn- 
ing was a quiet, comfortable, select sort of thing, and 
mutter secret maledictions on the revolutionary spir- 
its who have made it otherwise. 

But pardon me, dear reader,— all this has little to 
do with Paris, except by way of illustration of my 
remark that the youthful standard of intellectual 
weights and measures is the only infallible one we 
ever know. But Paris is something by itself : it over- 
rides all standards of greatness or beauty, and all 
preconceived notions of itself, and addresses itself 
with confidence to every taste. Ladies love Paris as 
a vast warehouse of jewelry and all the rich stuffs 
that hide the crinoline from eyes profane. Physi- 
cians revel in its hospitals, and talk of "splendid 
operations," such as make the unscientific change 
colour. 

Paris is a world in itself. Here may the Yankee 
find his pumpkin-pie and sherry-cobblers, the Eng- 
lishman his rosbif, the German his sauerkraut, the 
Italian his macaroni. Here may the lover of dra- 
matic art choose his performance among thirty 
theatres, and he who, with Mr. Swiveller, loves "the 
mazy," will find at the Jardin Mabille a bower 
shaded for him. Here the bookworm can mouse 
about, in more than twenty large public libraries, and 
spend weeks in the delightful exploration of count- 
less book-stalls. Here the student of art can read the 
history of France on the walls of Versailles, or, 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

revelling in the opulence of the Louvre, forget his 
studies, his technicalities, his criticisms, in contempla- 
tion of the majestic loveliness of Murillo's "sinless 
Mother of the sinless Child." Here may "fireside 
philanthropists, great at the pen," compare their 
magnificent theories with the works of delicate ladies 
who have left the wealth they possessed and the 
society they adorned, for the humble garb of the Sis- 
ter of Charity and a laborious ministry to the poor, 
the diseased, and the infirm, and meditate in the cool 
quadrangles of hospitals and benevolent institutions, 
founded by saints, and preserved in their integrity 
by the piety of their disciples. Here may the man 
who wishes to look beyond this brilliant world, find 
churches ever open, inviting to prayer and medita- 
tion, where he may be carried beyond himself by the 
choicest strains of Haydn and the solemn grandeur 
of the Gregorian Chant,— or may be thrilled by the 
eloquent periods of Ravignan or Lacordaire, until 
the unseen eternal fills his whole soul, and the visible 
temporal glories of the gay capital seem to him the 
transient vanities they really are. 

How few people really know Paris! To most 
"minds it presents itself only as a place of general 
pleasure-seeking and dissipation. I have seen many 
men whose only recollections of Paris were such as 
will give them no pleasure in old age, who flattered 
themselves that they knew Paris. They thought 
that the whole city was given up to the folly that 
captivated them, and so they represent Paris as one 
vast reckless masquerade. I have seen others who, 
walking through the thronged cafes and restaurants, 
have felt themselves justified in declaring that the 

D28] 



PARIS 

French had no domestic life, and were as ignorant of 
family joys as their language is destitute of a single 
word to express our good old Saxon word "home" ; 
not knowing that there are in Paris thousands of 
families as closely knit together as any that dwell in 
the smoky cities of Old England, or amid the bustle 
and activity of our new world. Good people may 
turn up their eyes, and talk and write as many jere- 
miads as they will about the vanity and wickedness 
of Paris; but the truth is, that this great Babel has 
even for them its cheering side, if they would but 
keep their eyes open to discover it. Let them visit 
the churches on the vigils of great feasts, and every 
Saturday, and see the crowds that throng the con- 
fessionals : let them rise an hour or two earlier than 
usual, and go into any of the churches, and they will 
find more worshippers there on any common week- 
day morning than half of the churches in New Eng- 
land collect on Sundays. Let them visit that 
magnificent temple, the Madeleine, and see the free- 
dom from social distinctions which prevails there: 
the soldier, the civilian, the rich and the poor, the 
high-bred lady, the servant in livery, and the negress 
with her bright yellow and red kerchief wound 
around her head, are there met, on an equality that 
free America knows not of. 

The observance of the Sunday is a sign of the 
times which ought not to be overlooked. Only a few 
years ago, and suspension of business on Sunday was 
so uncommon that notice was given by a sign to that 
effect on the front of the few shops whose pro- 
prietors indulged in that strange caprice. The signs 
(like certain similar ones on apothecary shops in 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

Boston, to the effect that prescriptions are the only 
business attended to on the first day of the week) 
used to seem to me like a bait to catch the custom of 
the godly. But the signs have passed away before 
this movement, inaugurated by the Emperor, who 
forbade labour on the public works on Sunday, and 
preached up by the late Archbishop of Paris and the 
parish clergy. There are few shops in Paris that do 
not close on Sunday now— at least in the afternoon. 
And this is done by the free will of the trades-people : 
it is not the result of a legislative enactment. The 
law here leaves all people free in regard to their re- 
ligious duties. The shops of the Jews, of course, 
are open on Sunday, for they are obliged to close on 
Saturday, and of course ought not to be expected to 
observe two days. Of course, too, the public gal- 
leries, and gardens, and places of amusement are all 
open; God forbid that the hard-faring children of 
toil should be cheated out of any innocent recreation 
on the only free day they have by any attempts to 
judaize the Christian Sunday into a sabbath. It is a 
great mistake to suppose that people can be made 
better by diminishing the sources of innocent pleas- 
ure. No ; if the Sunday be made a hard, uninterest- 
ing day, when smiling is a grave impropriety, and a 
hearty laugh a mortal sin, children will begin by 
disliking the day, and end by despising the religion 
that made it gloomy. But provide the people with 
music in the public parks on Sunday afternoon and 
evening,— make the day a cheerful, happy time to 
those who are ingulfed in the carking cares of life all 
the rest of the week,— make it a day which children 
shall look forward to with longing, and you will find 

[1303 



PARIS 

that the people are better, and happier, and thriftier 
for the change. You will find that the mechanic or 
labourer, instead of lounging away his Sunday in a 
grog-shop, (for the business goes on even though 
the front door may be barred and the shutters 
closed,) will be ambitious to take his wife and chil- 
dren to hear the music, and will after a time become 
as well behaved as the common run of people. It is 
better to use the merest worldly motives to keep men 
in the path of decency, than to let them slide away to 
perdition because they refuse to listen to the more 
dignified teachings of religion. 

I have been much impressed by a visit to a large, 
but unpretentious-looking house in the Rue du Bac— 
the "mother-house" of that admirable organization, 
the Sisters of Charity. It was not much of a visit, to 
be sure— for not even my gray hairs and respectable 
appearance could gain for me an admission beyond 
the strangers' parlour, the courtyard, and the cool, 
quiet chapel. But that was enough to increase my 
respect and admiration for those devoted women. 
The community there consists of six hundred Sisters 
of Charity, whose whole time is occupied in taking 
care of the sick, and needy, and neglected in the 
hospitals and asylums, and in every quarter of the 
city. You see them at every turn, going quietly 
about their work of benevolence, and presenting a 
fine contrast to some of our noisy theorists at home. 
I may be in error, but it strikes me that that com- 
munity is doing more in its present mode of action 
to advance the true dignity and "rights" of the sex, 
than if it were to resolve itself into a convention, 
after the American fashion. I was somewhat anx- 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

ious to inquire whether any of the sisters of the com- 
munity had ever taken to lecturing or preaching in 
public; but the modest and unassuming manner of all 
those whom I saw, rendered such a question unnec- 
essary. I fear that oratory is sadly neglected among 
them; with this exception, and perhaps the absence 
of a certain strong-mindedness in their characters, I 
think that they will compare very favourably with 
any of our distinguished female philanthropists. 
They wear the same gray habit and odd-shaped 
white bonnet that the Sisters of Charity wear in Bos- 
ton. While we praise the self-forgetful heroism of 
Florence Nightingale as it deserves, let us not forget 
that France sent out her Florence Nightingales to 
\_the Crimea by fifties and hundreds— young and deli- 
cate women, hiding their personality under the com- 
mon dress of a religious order, casting aside the 
names that would recall their rank in the world, 
unencouraged in their beneficence by any newspaper 
paragraphs, and unrewarded save by the sweet con- 
sciousness of duty done. The Emperor Alexander, 
struck by the part played in the Crimean campaign 
by the Sisters of Charity, has recently asked the 
superior of the order to detail five hundred of the 
sisters, for duty in the hospitals of Russia. It is 
understood that the request will be complied with so 
far as the number of the community will permit. 

If I were asked to sum up in one sentence the 
practical result of my observations of men and man- 
ners here on the continent, I should say that it was 
this : We have a great deal to learn in America con- 
cerning the philosophy of life. I do not mean that 
philosophy which teaches us that "it is not all of life 



PARIS 

to live," but the philosophy of making ninety-three 
cents furnish the same amount of comfort in Amer- 
ica that five francs do in Paris. The spirit of cen- 
tralization is stronger here than in any American 
city: (it is too true, as Heine said, that to speak of 
the departments of France having a political opinion 
as distinguished from Paris, "is to talk of a man's 
legs thinking;") and there is no reason why people 
of moderate means should not be able to live as 
respectably, comfortably, and economically in our 
cities as here, if they will only use a little common 
sense. The model-lodging-house enterprise was a 
most praiseworthy one, but it seems to have been 
confined only to the wants of the most necessitous 
class in the community. There is, however, a large 
class of salesmen, and book-keepers, and mechanics, 
on salaries of six hundred to twelve or fourteen hun- 
dred dollars, whose position is no less deserving of 
commiseration. When the prices of beefsteak and 
potatoes went up so amazingly a few years ago, 
there were few salaries that experienced a similar 
augmentation. The position of the men on small 
salaries therefore became peculiar, not to say un- 
pleasant, as rents rose in the same proportion as 
every thing else. Any person, familiar with the rents 
of brick houses for small families in most of the 
Atlantic cities, will see how difficult it is for such 
people as these to live within their means. Now, the 
remedy for this evil is a simple one, but it requires 
some public-spirited men to initiate it. Suppose that 
a few large, handsome houses, on the European 
plan, (that is, having a suite of rooms, comprising 
a parlour, dining-room, two or three bedrooms, and 

D33] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

a kitchen, on each floor,) were built in any of our 
great thoroughfares,— the ground floors might be 
used for shops,— for there is no reason why respect- 
able people should any more object to living over 
shops there, than on the Boulevards. Such houses, 
it is easy to see, would be good paying property to 
their owners, as soon as people got into that way of 
living; and when salaried men saw that they could 
get the equivalent, in comfort and available room, to 
an ordinary five hundred dollar house for half that 
rent, in a central situation, depend upon it, they 
would not be long in learning how to live in that 
style. The advantages of this plan of domestic life 
are numerous and striking. Housekeeping would be 
disarmed of half its difficulties; the little kitchen 
would furnish the coffee and eggs in the morning and 
the tea and toast at night— the dinner might be or- 
dered from a neighbouring restaurant for any hour 
—for such establishments would increase with the 
increase of apartments. The dangers of burglary 
would be diminished, for the housekeeper would 
have only the door leading to the staircase to lock 
up at night. The washing would be done out of the 
house, and the steam of boiling suds, and all anxiety 
about clothes-lines, and sooty chimneys, and windy 
weather would thereby be avoided. Thousands of 
people would be liberated from the caprice and petty 
tyranny of the railroad directors, whose action has 
so often filled our newspapers with resolutions and 
protests, and, so far as Boston is concerned, its pen- 
insula might be made the home of a population of 
three hundred thousand instead of a hundred and 
eighty thousand persons. The most rigidly careless 

Ci343 



PARIS 

person can hardly fail to become a successful house- 
keeper, when the matter is made so easy as it is by 
the European plan. The plan, too, not only simpli- 
fies the mysteries of domestic economy, but it snuggi- 
fies one's establishment wonderfully, and gives it a 
home feeling, such as what are called genteel houses 
nowadays wot not of. The change has got to come 
—and the sooner it does, the better it will be for our 
cities, and many of their people, who have been 
driven into remote and unpleasant suburbs by high 
rents, or who are held back from marriage by the 
expenses of housekeeping conducted on the present 
method. 



Ci3s3 



PARIS 

THE LOUVRE AND ART 

IT is an inestimable advantage to an idle man to 
have such a place as the Louvre ever open to 
him. The book-stalls and print-shops of the quays, 
those never-failing sources of pleasure and of 
extravagance in a small way, cannot be visited with 
any satisfaction under the meridian sun; the shop 
windows, a perpetual industrial exhibition, grow tire- 
some at times ; the streets are too crowded, the gar- 
dens too empty; the reading rooms are close; the 
newspapers are stupid; and what remains? Why, 
the Louvre opens its hospitable doors, and, blessing 
the memory of Francis L, the tired wanderer enters, 
and drinks in the refreshing coolness of those quiet 
and spacious halls. If he is an antiquarian, he 
plunges deep into the arcana of ancient Egypt, and 
emulates the great Champollion; if he is a student 
of history, he muses on the sceptre of Charlemagne, 
or the old gray coat and coronation robes of the first 
Napoleon ; if he is devoted to art, he travels through 
that wilderness of paintings and statuary, and thinks 
and talks about chiaro y scuro } "breadth of colour," 
or "bits of foreshortening." But if he be a man of 
simple tastes, who detests technicalities, and enjoys 
all such things in a quiet, general sort of way, with- 
out knowing exactly what it is that pleases him,— he 
goes through room after room, now stopping for an 
instant before a set of antique china, now speculating 

[136] 



PARIS-THE LOUVRE AND ART 

on the figure he should cut in one of those old suits 
of armour, and finally settling down in a chair before 
some landscape by Cuyp or Claude, in which the 
artist seems to have imprisoned the sunbeams and 
the warm, fragrant atmosphere of early June; or 
else he seats himself on that comfortable sofa before 
Murillo's masterpiece, and contemplates the su- 
pernal beauty and holy exaltation of the face of her 
whom Dante calls the "Virgin Mother, daughter of 
her Son." He is surrounded by artists, engaged in 
a work that seems to verify the old maxim, Laborare 
est or are, — each one striving to reproduce on his can- 
vas the effects of the angel-guided pencil of Murillo. 
I find it useless for me to attempt to visit the 
Louvre systematically, as most people do. I have 
frequently tried to do it, but it has ended by my 
walking through one or two rooms, and then taking 
up my position before Murillo's Conception, and 
holding it until the hour came for closing the gallery. 
When I was young, I used to think what a glorious 
thing it would have been to have felt the thrill of joy 
that filled the heart of the discoverer of America, or 
the satisfaction of Shakspeare when he had finished 
Hamlet or Macbeth, or of Beethoven when he had 
completed his seventh symphony; but all that covet- 
ousness of the impossible is blotted out by my envy 
of the great Spanish painter. What must have been 
the deep transport of his heart, when he gazed upon 
the heavenly vision his own genius had created ! He 
must have felt 

" — — like some watcher of the skies, 
When a new planet sails into his ken, 
Or like stout Cortez, when, with eagle eyes, 
He stared at the Pacific. " 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

In spite of all my natural New England prejudice, 
I cannot help admiring and loving that old Catholic 
devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Its humanizing 
effects can be seen in the history of the middle ages, 
and they are felt amid all the bustle and roar of this 
irreverent nineteenth century. Woman cannot again 
be thought the soulless being heathen philosophy 
considered her; she cannot again become a slave, for 
she is recognized as the sister of her who was chosen 
to make reparation for the misdeeds of Mother Eve. 
I am strongly tempted to transcribe here some lines 
written in pencil on the fly-leaf of an old catalogue 
of the museum of the Louvre, and found on the sofa 
before Murillo's picture. The writer seems to have 
had in mind the beautiful conclusion of the life of 
Agricola by Tacitus, where the great historian says 
that he would not forbid the making of likenesses in 
marble or bronze, but would only remind us that 
such images, like the forms of their originals, are 
frail and unenduring, while the beauty of the mind is 
eternal, and can be perpetuated in the manners of 
succeeding generations better than by ignoble ma- 
terials and the art of the sculptor. The lines appear 
to be a paraphrase of this idea. 



O blest Murillo ! what a task was thine, 

That Mother to portray whose beauty mild 

Combined earth's comeliness with grace divine, — 
To whom our God and Saviour as a child 
Was subject — upon whom so oft He smiled! 

Yet not less happy also in my part, — 
For I, though in a world by sin defiled, 

Though lacking genius and unskilled in art, 

May paint that blessed likeness in a contrite heart. 



D38] 



PARIS-THE LOUVRE AND ART 

Art is the surest and safest civilizer. Popular 
education may be so perverted as only to minister to 
new forms of corruption, but art purifies itself; it has 
no Voltaires, and Rousseaus, and Eugene Sues,— for 
painting and sculpture, like poetry, refuse to be 
made the handmaids of vice or unbelief. Open your 
galleries of art to the people, and you confer on them 
a greater benefit than mere book education ; you give 
them a refinement to which they would otherwise be 
strangers. The boor, turned loose into civilized 
society, soon catches something of its tone of polite- 
ness; and those who are accustomed to the contem- 
plation of forms of ideal beauty will not easily be 
won by the grossness and deformity of vice. A fine 
picture daily looked at becomes by degrees a part of 
our own souls, and exerts an influence over us of 
which we are little aware. Some English writer— 
Hazlitt, I think— has said, that if a man were think- 
ing of committing some wicked or disgraceful action, 
and were to stop short and look for a moment at 
some fine picture with which he had been familiar, 
he would inevitably be turned thereby from his pur- 
pose. It is to be hoped that the time is not far dis- 
tant when each of our great American cities shall 
possess its gallery of art, which (on certain days of 
the week, at least) shall be as free to all well-be- 
haved persons as the public parks themselves. We 
may not boast the artistic wealth of Rome, Florence, 
Paris, Dresden, or any of the old capitals of Europe; 
but the sooner we make a beginning, the better it will 
be for our galleries and our mob. We need some 
more effectual humanizer than our educational sys- 
tem. Reading, writing, and ciphering are great 

D39] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

things, but they are powerless to overcome the rude- 
ness and irreverence of our people. Our populace 
seems to lack entirely the sense of the beautiful or 
the sublime. As Charles Lamb said, "They have, 
alas! no passion for antiquities— for the tomb of 
king or prelate, sage or poet. If they had, they 
would no longer be the rabble." It is too true that 
the attempts which have been made to open private 
gardens to the enjoyment of the public have resulted 
in the most shameful abuses of privilege, and that 
flowers are stolen from the graves in our cemeteries ; 
but there is no reason for giving our people up as 
past praying for, on the score of politeness and com- 
mon decency. They must be educated up to it : some 
abuses may occur at first, but a few salutary lessons on 
the necessity of submission to authority will rectify 
it all, and our people will, in the course of time, be- 
come as well-behaved as the people of France or 
Italy. 

I am no antiquarian. I do not love the antique 
for antiquity's sake. It must appeal to me through 
the medium of history, or not at all. Etruscan relics 
have no other charm for me than their beauty of 
form. I care but little for Egyptian sarcophagi or 
their devices and hieroglyphics, and I would not go 
half a mile to see a wilderness of mummies. When- 
ever I feel a longing for any thing in the Egyptian or 
heathen line, I can resort to Mount Auburn, with its 
gateway — and this thought satisfies me; so that I 
pass by all such things without feeling that I am a 
loser. With such feelings, there are many of the 
halls of the Louvre which I only walk through with 
an admiring glance at their elegance of arrangement. 

D4o3 



PARIS-THE LOUVRE AND ART 

A few days since, in wandering about there, I found 
a room which I had never seen before, and which 
touched me more nearly than any thing there, except 
the paintings. It has been opened recently. I had 
been looking through the relics of royalty with a con- 
siderable degree of pleasure,— meditating on the 
armour of Henry the Great, the breviary of St. 
Louis, and the worn satin shoe which once covered 
the little foot of Marie Antoinette,— and was about 
to leave, when I noticed that a door was open which 
in past years I had seen closed. I pushed in, and 
found myself in a vast and magnificent apartment, on 
the gorgeously frescoed ceiling of which was em- 
blazoned the name— which is a tower of strength to 
every Frenchman— Napoleon. Around the room, in 
elegant glass cases, were disposed the relics of the 
saint whom Mr. Abbott's bull of canonization has 
placed in red letters in the calendar of Young Amer- 
ica. Leaving aside all joking upon the attempts to 
prove that much-slandered monarch a saint, there 
was his history, written as Sartor Resartus would 
have written it, in his clothes. There was a crayon 
sketch of him at the age of sixteen; there was a 
mathematical book which he had studied, the case of 
mathematical instruments he had used; there was the 
coat in which he rode up and down the lines of 
Marengo, inspiring every heart with heroism, and 
every arm with vigour; the sword and coat he wore 
as First Consul; the glittering robes which decked 
him when he sat in the chair of Clovis and Charle- 
magne, the idol of his nation, and the terror of all 
the world besides; the stirrups in which he stood at 
Waterloo, and saw his brave legions cut up and dis- 

C141] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

persed; and, though last, not least, there was the old 
gray coat and hat in which he walked about at St. 
Helena, and the very handkerchief which in his 
dying hour wiped the chill dew of eternity from his 
brow. There were many things besides— there were 
his table and chair ; his camp bed on which he rested 
during those long campaigns; his gloves, his razor 
strap, his comb, the clothes of his little son, the 
"King of Rome,'' and the bow he played with; the 
saddles and other presents which he received during 
his expedition to the East, and his various court 
dresses— but the old gray coat was the most attrac- 
tive of all. It was a consolation to notice that it had 
lost a button, for it showed that though its wearer 
was an anointed emperor, he was not exempt from 
the vicissitudes of common humanity. I sat down 
and observed the people who visited the room, and I 
noticed that they all lingered around the old coat. 
It made no difference whether they spoke English, 
French, German, or any other tongue; there was 
something which appealed to them all; there was a 
common ground, where the student and the enthu- 
siastic lover of high art could join in harmonious 
feeling, even with the practical man, who would not 
have cared a three-cent piece if Praxiteles and Ca- 
nova had never sculptured, or Raphael and Murillo 
had never seen a brush. It required but a slight 
effort to fill the room up of the absent hero, and to 
"stuff out his vacant garments with his form," and 
perhaps this very thing tended to make the entire 
exhibition a sad one. It was the most melancholy 
commentary on human glory that can be imagined. 
It ought to be placed in the vestibule of a church, or 

CI42 3 



PARIS-THE LOUVRE AND ART 

in some more public place, and it would purge a 
community of ambition. What a sermon might La- 
cordaire preach on the temporal and the eternal, with 
the sword and the coronation robes of Napoleon I. 
before him ! 

The interest which I have seen manifested by so 
many people in the relics of Napoleon I. has af- 
forded me considerable amusement. I have lately 
seen so much ridicule cast upon the relics of the 
saints preserved in many of the churches of Italy, by 
people of the same class as those who lingered so 
reverentially before the glass cases of the Napoleon 
room in the Louvre, that I cannot help thinking how 
rare a virtue consistency is. 

Perhaps it may be owing to some weakness in my 
mental organization, but I cannot acknowledge the 
propriety of honouring the burial-places of success- 
ful generals, and, at the same time, think the shrines 
of the saints worthy of nothing but ridicule and 
desecration. I found myself, a few years ago, look- 
ing with grave interest at an old coat of General 
Jackson's, which is preserved in the Patent Office at 
Washington; and I cannot wonder at the reverence 
which some people pay to the garments of a martyr 
in the cause of religion. I cannot understand how it 
may be right and proper to celebrate the birthdays 
of worldly heroes, and "rank idolatry" to commem- 
orate the self-denying heroes of Christianity. I can- 
not join in the setting-up of statues of generals and 
statesmen, and condemn a similar homage to the 
saints by any allusions to the enormity of making a 
"graven image." In fine, if it is right to adorn and 
reverence the tomb of the Father of his Country, 

D43] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

(and what American heart does not acknowledge its 
propriety?) it certainly cannot be wrong to beautify 
and venerate the tomb of the chief apostle, and the 
shrines of saints and martyrs who achieved for them- 
selves and their fellow-men an independence from a 
tyranny infinitely worse than that from which Wash- 
ington liberated America. 

I have recently been visiting the three great monu- 
ments of the reign of Napoleon III.— the completed 
Louvre, the Bois de Boulogne, and the Halles Cen- 
trales. As to the first, those who remember those 
narrow, nasty streets, which within six years were 
the approaches to the Louvre and the Palais Royal, 
and those rickety old buildings reminding one too 
strongly of cheese in an advanced stage of moodi- 
ness, that used to intrude their unsightly forms into 
the very middle of the Place du Carrousel, — those 
who recollect the junk shops that seemed more fitting 
to the neighbourhood of the docks than to the en- 
trance to a palace and a gallery of art, — feel in a 
manner lost, when they walk about the courtyards of 
the noble edifice which has taken the place of so 
much deformity. If the new wings of the Louvre 
had been built in one range instead of quadrangles, 
they would extend more than half a mile ! Half a 
mile of palace, and a palace, too, which in building 
has occupied one hundred and fifty sculptors for the 
past five years ! Those who have not visited Paris 
within {\vo years will recollect the Bois de Boulogne 
only as a vast neglected tract of woodland, which 
seemed a great waste of the raw material in a place 
where firewood is so expensive as it is here. It is 
now laid out in beautiful avenues and walks, the 

D443 



PARIS-THE LOUVRE AND ART 

extent of which is said to be nearly two hundred 
miles. You are refreshed by the sound of waterfalls 
and the coolness of grottos, the rocks for the forma- 
tion of which were brought from Fontainebleau, 
more than forty miles distant from Paris. You walk 
on, and find yourself on the shores of a lake, a mile 
or two in length, with two or three lovely islands in 
it, and in whose bright blue waters thousands of 
trout are sporting. That wild waste, the old Bois de 
Boulogne, which few persons but duellists ever vis- 
ited, has passed away, and in its place you find the 
most magnificent park in the world. It is indeed a per- 
fect triumph of landscape gardening. It is nature it- 
self, not in miniature, but on such a scale as to deceive 
you entirely, and fill you with the same feeling of 
admiration that is awakened by any striking natural 
beauty. The old French notions of landscape gar- 
dening seem to have been entirely cast aside. The 
carriage roads and paths go winding about so that 
the view is constantly changing, and the trees are 
allowed to grow as they please, without being tor- 
tured into fantastic shapes by the pruning knife. The 
banks of the lake have been made irregular, now 
steep, now sloping gently to the water's edge, and in 
some places huge jagged rocks have been most nat- 
urally worked in, while ivy has been planted around 
them, and in their crevices those weeds and shrubs 
which commonly grow in such places. You would 
about as readily take Jamaica Pond to be artificial as 
this lovely sheet of water and its surroundings. The 
Avenue de l'lmperatrice is the road from the Arc de 
Triomphe to the Bois de Boulogne. It is half or 
three quarters of a mile in length, and is destined to 

D45 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

be one of the most striking features of Paris. It is 
laid out with spacious grass plots, with carriage ways 
and ways for equestrians and foot passengers, with 
regular double rows of trees on either side. Many 
elegant chateau-like private residences already adorn 
it, and others are rapidly rising. An idea of its 
majestic appearance may be had from the fact that 
its entire width from house to house is about four 
hundred feet. The large space around the Arc de 
Triomphe is already laid out in a square, to be called 
the Place de l'Europe, and the work has already 
been commenced of reducing the buildings around it 
to symmetry. The Halles Centrales, the great cen- 
tral market-house of Paris, has just been opened to 
the public. It is built mainly of iron and glass. As 
nearly as I could judge of its size, I should think it 
would leave but little spare room if it were placed in 
Union Park, New York. It is about a hundred feet 
in height, and so well ventilated that it is hard to 
realize when there that one is under cover. A wide 
street for vehicles runs through its whole length, 
crossed by others at equal intervals. I have called 
these three public improvements the great monu- 
ments of the reign of Napoleon III.; not that I 
would limit his good works to these, but because 
these may be taken as conspicuous illustrations of his 
care, no less for the amusements than for the bodily 
wants of his people, and of his zeal for the promo- 
tion of art and the adornment of his capital. But 
these noble characteristics of the Emperor deserve 
something more than a mere passing notice, and may 
well form the subject of my next letter. 

D46] 



NAPOLEON THE THIRD 1 

THERE is a period in the life of almost every 
man which may justly be termed the romantic 
period. I do not mean the time when a youth, whose 
heart is as yet unwarped by the selfishness of the 
world, and his brow unclouded by its trials and its 
sorrows, thinks that the performance of his life will 
fully come up to the glowing programme he then 
composes for it; neither do I refer to the period 
when, in hungry expectation, we clutched eagerly at 
the booksellers' announcements of the last produc- 
tions of the eloquent Bulwer, or of the inexhaustible 
James. But I refer to the time when childhood for- 
gets its new buttons in reading how poor Ali Baba 
relieved his wants at the expense of the wicked 
thieves; how Whittington heard Bow Bells ring out 
the prophecy of his greatness; how fierce Blue Beard 
punished his wife's curiosity; and how good King 
Alfred merited reproof by his forgetfulness of the 
herdsman's supper. This is the true period of 

;! The author must plead guilty to a little hesitation (induced by the 
present aspect of European affairs) about incorporating this paper on 
t'he French Emperor, written some three years since, in his work. He 
'feels, however, that, whatever may be the issue of the present contest in 
f Europe, the services of Napoleon III. to France and to civilization are 
a part of history $ and he has no wish to disguise his satisfaction at hav- 
ing been one of the first Americans who confronted the vulgar prejudices 
of his countrymen against that remarkable man, and publicly recognized 
the wonderful talents which have placed France at the head of all civil- 
ized nations. 

[1473 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

romance in the lives of all of us; for then all the 
romance that we read is clothed with the dignity of 
history, and all our history is invested with the 
charm of romance. This happy period does not lose 
its attractions, even when we outgrow the credulity 
of childhood; for the romance of history captivates 
us when we no longer are subject to the sway of the 
novelist; and we leave Mr. Thackeray's last uncut, 
until we can finish a newspaper chapter in the history 
of these momentous times. 

We know how eagerly we pursue the vicissitudes 
of fortune which have marked the career of so many 
of the world's heroes; and this will teach us how 
future generations will read the history of the pres- 
ent century. Surely the whole range of romance 
presents no parallel to the simple history of the won- 
derful man who now governs France. It is easy to 
see that his varied fortunes will one day perform a 
conspicuous part in that juvenile classical literature 
of which I have spoken ; and perhaps it may not be 
unprofitable, dear reader, for us to endeavour to 
raise ourselves above the excitement of partisanship 
and the influences of old prejudices, and look upon 
his career as may the writers of the twenty-fifth \ cen- 

tury \ 1 . 

It is a popular error in America to regard Louis 

Napoleon as a singular combination of knavery an\d 
half-wittedness. Even Mr. Emerson, in his English 
Traits, so far forgets the kindliness of his nature as 
to call him a "successful thief." The English jour- 
nalists once delighted to ridicule him as the "nephew 
of his uncle," and the shadow of a great name, and 
Punch used to represent him as a pygmy standing 



NAPOLEON THE THIRD 

upon the brim of his uncle's hat, and wondering how 
he could ever fill it; but he has lived down ridicule, 
and they have long since learned that there is such a 
thing as the possibility of a mistake in judgment, 
even among journalists and politicians. It is time 
that we Americans got over a notion which has long 
since been exploded on this side of the Atlantic. I 
know that I am flying in the face of those who believe 
in the plenary inspiration of the New York Tribune, 
when I claim for the Emperor any thing like patriot- 
ism or capacity as a statesman. I know that the 
Greeleian, "philanthropic" code exacts that we 
should not "give the prisoner the benefit of the 
doubt," and that when any one whom we dislike does 
any good, we should attribute it to nothing but a 
selfish or ambitious motive. I know that this new- 
fangled love of all mankind requires us to hate those 
who differ from us politically, and never to lose an 
opportunity to blacken their characters and diminish 
their reputation; and therefore I make all due allow- 
ances for the refusal of the Tribune, and journals of 
the same amiable family, to see the truth. In April, 
1856, I was waiting for a train in a way station on 
the Worcester Railroad. A sun-burned, hard-work- 
ing man was reading the news of the proclamation of 
peace at Paris from a penny paper, and he com- 
mented upon it to two or three others who were pres- 
ent, as follows: "Well, I don't know how 'tis, but it 
seems to me that we've been most almightily mis- 
taken about this 'ere Lewis Napoleon. We used to 
think he was a shaller kind o' feller any how, but it 
really looks now, judging from the position of 
France in European affairs, as if he was turning out 

D49 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

to be altogether the biggest dog in that tanyard!" 
The old fellow's conclusion was a true one, though 
his rhetoric would not have been commended at 
Cambridge; and it is to prevent this conclusion forc- 
ing itself upon the public sense, that the sym- 
pathizers with socialism have been labouring ever 
since. We are told that it is our duty as Americans 
and republicans to wish for the overthrow of Na- 
poleon and his empire, and the establishment of the 
republique democratique et sociale. Now, having 
received my political principles from another source 
than the Tribune, I may be pardoned for having a 
prejudice in favour of allowing the people of France 
to govern France; and, as they elected Louis Na- 
poleon President in 1848 by more than five millions 
of votes, and in 1851 chose him dictator (in their 
fear of the very party which the Tribune wishes to 
see in power) by more than seven millions of votes, 
and finally, in 1852, made him their Emperor by a 
vote of more than seven millions against a little more 
than three hundred thousand, we may suppose 
France to have expressed a pretty decided opinion 
on this matter. The French empire rests upon the 
very principle that forms the basis of true repub- 
licanism—universal suffrage. Louis Napoleon re- 
stored that principle after it had been suppressed or 
restricted, and proved himself a truer republican 
than his opponents. For nine years, Napoleon has 
been sustained by the people of France with a 
unanimity such as the United States never knew, ex- 
cept in the election of Washington as first President, 
and his majority has increased every time that he has 
appealed to the people. It is idle to say that there are 

Ci5o3 



NAPOLEON THE THIRD 

parties here that are opposed to him ; it would be a 
remarkable phenomenon if there were not. But 
there is a more united support here for the Emperor 
than there is in our own country for the constitution 
of the United States, and any right-minded man 
would regret a revolutionary movement in one coun- 
try as much as in the other. 

If there was ever a position calculated to test the 
capabilities of its occupant, it was that in which Louis 
Napoleon found himself when he obeyed the voice 
of the French people, and accepted the presidency of 
the French republic. Surrounded by men holding 
all kinds of political opinions, from the agrarian 
Proudhon to the impracticable Louis Blanc, and men 
of no political opinions whatever,— he found him- 
self obliged to use all the power reposed in him by 
the constitution, to keep the government from falling 
asunder. History bears witness to the fact that re- 
publican governments deteriorate more rapidly than 
those which are based upon a less changeable foun- 
dation than the popular will. But there was little 
danger of the French republic deteriorating, for it 
was about as weak and unprincipled as it could be in 
its very inception. There were a few men of high 
and patriotic character in the Assembly, but (as is 
generally the case) their voices were drowned amid 
the clamourings of a crowd of radical journalists and 
ambitious litterateurs, whose only bond of union was 
a fierce hatred of law and religion, and a desire for 
the spoils of office. These were the men with whom 
Napoleon had to deal. They had favoured his elec- 
tion to the presidency, for, in their misapprehension 
of his character, they thought him the mere shadow 

D5i] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

of a name, and expected under his government to 
have all things their own way. But they were not 
long in discovering their mistake. 

His conduct soon showed that he was the proper 
man for the crisis. That unflinching republican, 
General Cavaignac, had before pointed out the dan- 
gers to all European governments, and to civilization 
itself, that would spring from the continuance of the 
sanguinary and sacrilegious Roman Republic; and 
Napoleon, accepting his suggestions, took immediate 
measures to put an end to the atrocities which 
marked the sway of Mazzini and his assassins in the 
Roman States. 1 The success which attended these 
measures is now a part of history. There is a kind 
of historical justice in this part of Napoleon's career 
which must force itself upon every reflecting mind. 
From the day when St. Remy told his royal convert, 
Clovis, to "burn what he had adored, and adore 
what he had burned," the monarch of France had 
always been considered the "eldest son of the 
Church." The Roman Pontiff was indebted to Pepin 
and Charlemagne for those possessions which ren- 
dered him independent of the secular power. In the 

1 Lest I should be thought guilty of speaking rashly with regard to the 
anarchy which Napoleon destroyed in 1 849 at Rome, I take the liberty to 
transcribe a few extracts from the constitution of the Society of "Young 
Italy,'" which will give some idea of the principles upon which the Roman 
Republic rested. I translate from the edition published at Naples, by 
Benedetto Cantalupo. 

"Article I. The Society is established for the entire destruction 
of all the governments of the peninsula, and for the forming of Italy into 
a single state, under a republican government. 

" Art. II. In consequence of the evils attendant upon absolute gov- 
ernment, and the still greater evils of constitutional monarchy, we ought 
to join all our efforts to establish a single and indivisible republic. 

" Art. XXX. Those members who shall disobey the commands of 

£152:1 



NAPOLEON THE THIRD 

hour of need it was always to the Kings of France 
that he looked for aid; and whether he sought aid 
against the oppressors of the Holy See or the infidel 
possessors of the Holy Sepulchre, he seldom ap- 
pealed to them in vain. It was meet, therefore, that 
Napoleon should inaugurate his power by thus re- 
viving the ancient traditionary spirit of the French 
monarchy; for he could not better prove his worthi- 
ness to sit on the throne which had been occupied by 
so many generous and heroic spirits, than by fight- 
ing the battles of the Church they loved so well. 

The foreign and domestic policy which the Prince- 
President pursued excited at the same time the anger 
of the ultra republican faction, and the hopes of the 
religious and conservative portion of society. Order 
was restored, and an impetus was given to commer- 
cial enterprise and to the arts of peace such as France 
had not known since the outbreak of 1848. Still the 
discordant elements of which the Assembly was com- 
posed, were a just cause of alarm to all friends of 
good order, and all parties, conservative and radical, 

the Society, or who shall reveal its mysteries, shall be poniarded without 
remission. 

«« Art. XXXI. The secret tribunal shall pronounce sentence in such 
cases as the preceding, and shall designate one or more of the brethren 
to carry it into instant execution. 

«' Art. XXXII. The brother who shall refuse to execute a sentence 
thus pronounced shall be considered as a perjurer, and as such shall be 
immediately put to death. 

"Art. XXXIII. If the victim condemned to punishment should 
succeed in escaping, he shall be pursued unremittingly into anyplace what- 
ever, and shall be struck as by an invisible hand, even if he shall have 
taken refuge on the bosom of his mother, or in the tabernacle of Christ. 

" Art. XXXI V. Each secret tribunal shall be competent not only 
to condemn the guilty to death, but also to put to death all persons so 
sentenced. ' * 

D53] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

regarded the existing state of affairs as a temporary 
one. Napoleon saw that the only obstacle in the 
path of the nation to peace and prosperity was the 
Assembly— the radicals of the Assembly that the 
Prince-President was the only obstacle to their plans 
of disorganization and anarchy; and they also saw 
that, if the question were allowed to go to the people 
at the expiration of Napoleon's term of office, he 
would surely be reelected, and that his policy would 
be triumphantly confirmed. So, as the time drew 
near for the new election, the struggle between the 
President and the Assembly— between order and 
anarchy— grew more and more severe. Plots were 
formed against Napoleon, and were just ripening for 
execution, when, on the second of December, 1851, 
he terminated the suspense of the nation by seizing 
and throwing into prison all the chief conspirators 
against the public peace, and then appealed to the 
people to sustain him in his efforts to preserve his 
country from the state of anarchy towards which it 
seemed to be hastening. The people answered 
promptly and with good will to the call, and Na- 
poleon gained an almost bloodless victory. 

But we are told that by the coup d'etat, "Napoleon 
violated his oath to sustain the constitution of the 
republic— that he is a perjurer, and all his success 
cannot diminish his crime.' ' So might one of the old 
loyalists have said about our own Washington. "He 
was a British subject— by accepting a commission 
under Braddock, he formally acknowledged his 
allegiance to the crown— by drawing his sword in 
the revolution, he violated not only his fidelity as a 
subject, but his honour as a soldier." And what 

£154:1 



NAPOLEON THE THIRD 

would any American reply to this? He would say 
that Washington never bound himself to violate his 
conscience, and that conscientiously he felt bound to 
defend the old English principles of free govern- 
ment even against the encroachments of his own 
rightful sovereign. And so, with equal reason, it 
may be said of Louis Napoleon, when the term of 
his presidency was approaching, and the radical 
members of the Assembly were forming conspiracies 
to dispose of him so as to prevent his reelection, he 
was bound in conscience, as the chief ruler of his 
country, to prevent the anarchy that must result from 
such a movement. And how could he do this save by 
dissolving the Assembly and appealing to the people 
as he did? The constitution was nullified by the 
plots of the Assembly, and France in 1851 was really 
without a government, until the coup d'etat inaugu- 
rated the present reign of public prosperity and 
peace. The coup d'etat was not only justifiable— it 
was praiseworthy. When the prejudices and party 
spirit of the present time shall have passed away, the 
historian will grow eloquent in speaking of that fear- 
less and far-sighted statesman, who, when his coun- 
try was threatened with a repetition of the civil strife 
which had too often shaken her to her centre, threw 
himself boldly upon the patriotism of the people 
with those noble words, "The Assembly, instead of 
being what it ought to be, the support of public 
order, has become a nest of conspiracies. It com- 
promises the peace of France. I have dissolved it; 
and I call upon the whole people to judge between it 
and myself."— The coup d'etat excited the anger 
only of the socialists and of those partisans of the 

D553 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

houses of Bourbon and Orleans who loved those 
families more than they loved their country's wel- 
fare; for they saw, by the revival of business, that 
confidence in the stability of the government was es- 
tablished, and that Napoleon had obtained a place in 
the affections of the French people from which he 
could not easily be dislodged. 

From this dictatorship, which the dangers of the 
time had rendered necessary, it was an easy transi- 
tion to the empire, and Louis Napoleon found his 
succession to the throne of his uncle confirmed by 
almost the unanimous vote of the French people. It 
was a tribute to the man, and to his public policy, 
such as no ruler in modern times has ever received, 
and for unanimity is unparalleled in the history of 
popular elections. His marriage followed quickly 
upon the proclamation of the empire; and in 'this, as 
in all his acts, we can discern his manly and inde- 
pendent spirit. He sought not to ally himself with 
any of the royal families of Europe, for he felt him- 
self to be so sure of his position, that he could with- 
out risk consult his affections rather than policy or 
ambition. 

The skilful diplomacy which led to the alliance 
with England, the campaign in the Crimea, and the 
repulse of Russia, are too fresh in every body's recol- 
lection to bear any repetition. So far as they concern 
Napoleon III., the world is a witness to his match- 
less coolness and determination. What could be 
grander than the heroic inflexibility he displayed in 
the face of the accumulated disasters of that cam- 
paign, and the murmurs of his allies! Misfortune 
only seemed to nerve him to more vigorous effort. 



NAPOLEON THE THIRD 

During that terrible winter of 1854-5, he appeared 
more like a fixed, unvarying law of nature than a 
man,— so immovable was he in his opposition to 
those who, pressed by the unlooked-for difficulties of 
the time, counselled a change of policy. The success- 
ful termination of the siege of Sebastopol, however, 
proved the justice of his calculations, and, while con- 
quering monarchs in other times have been content to 
see the negotiations for peace made in some provin- 
cial town, or in a city of some neutral state, the proud 
satisfaction was conceded to him by Russia of having 
the peace conferences held in his own capital. 

But while commemorating the success of his efforts 
to raise his country to a commanding position among 
the nations, we must not forget the great enterprises 
of internal improvement which he has set on foot 
within his empire. Who can recall what Paris was 
under Louis Philippe, or the time of the republic, 
and compare it with the Paris of to-day, without ad- 
miring the genius of Napoleon III. ? Who does not 
recognize a wonderful capacity for the administra- 
tion of government in the Emperor, when he sees 
that nearly all of these great improvements (unlike 
those of Louis XIV., which impoverished the na- 
tion) will gradually but surely pay for themselves by 
increasing the amount of taxable property? Indeed, 
the improvements in the city of Paris alone are on so 
vast a scale as to be incomprehensible to any one 
unacquainted with that capital. If Napoleon were 
to-day to fall a victim to that organization of repub- 
lican assassins which is known to exist in France, as 
well as in the other states of Europe, he would leave, 
in the Louvre, in the Bois de Boulogne, in the new 

Ci57] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

Boulevards, and the extension of the Rue de Rivoli, 
together with the countless other public works which 
now adorn Paris, testimonials to the splendour of 
his brief reign, such as no monarch ever left before : 
of him, as of Sir Christopher Wren, it might be truly 
said, "Si quarts monumentum, circumspice" 

But we must not think that Napoleon has confined 
his exertions to the improvement of Paris alone. 
Not a single province of his empire has been neg- 
lected by him, and there is scarcely a town that has 
not felt the influence of his policy. The foreign 
commerce of France has been wonderfully increased 
by him, and his favourite project for a ship canal 
through the Isthmus of Suez is now numbered among 
the probabilities of the age. When it is considered 
what a narrow strip of land separates the Red Sea 
from the Mediterranean, and what an immense ad- 
vantage such a canal would be to all the countries 
bordering on the latter, it is not wonderful that Na- 
poleon should find so many friends among the 
sovereigns of Europe. He has not built the mag- 
nificent new port of Marseilles merely for the ac- 
commodation of the Mediterranean coasting trade 
of his empire. His far-seeing eye looks upon those 
massive quays covered with merchandise from every 
quarter of the Orient, brought, not around the 
stormy Cape, nor by the toilsome caravan over the 
parching desert, but by the swift steamers of the 
Messageries Imperiales from every port of India, 
through the waters which, centuries ago, rolled back 
and opened a path of safety to the chosen people of 
God. 

If the old proverb be true, that a man is known by 

D583 



NAPOLEON THE THIRD 

the company he keeps, it is equally true, on the other 
hand, that a statesman may be rightly known by ex- 
amining the character of his opponents. And who 
are the opponents of Napoleon III.? With the ex- 
ception of a few partisans of the Bourbons, (whose 
opposition to the Napoleon dynasty is an hereditary 
complaint,) they are radical demagogues, who de- 
light to mislead the fickle multitude with the words, 
- 'Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," on their lips, 
but the designs of anarchy and bloodshed in their 
hearts. Their ranks are swelled by a number of 
visionary "philanthropists," and a large number of 
newspaper scribblers deprived of their occupation by 
Napoleon's salutary laws against abuse of the liberty 
of the press, and lacking ambition to earn an honest 
livelihood. Among them may be found a few liter- 
ary men of high reputation, who have espoused some 
impracticable theory of government, and would 
blindly throw away their well-earned fame, and shed 
the last drop of their ink in forcing it upon an unwill- 
ing nation. 

Slander, like Death, loves a shining mark. The 
fact cannot be doubted, if we look at the lives of the 
greatest and best men the world has ever seen. In 
truth, a large part of the heroism of the noblest 
patriots, and the purest philanthropists, has been 
created by the necessity they have been under to bear 
up against the obloquy with which enmity or envy 
has assailed them. The Emperor Napoleon is, be- 
yond a doubt, the best abused man in Christendom. 
There probably never existed a man whose every act 
and every motive have been more studiously mis- 
represented and systematically lied about than his. 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

It cannot be wondered at, either ; for he exercises too 
much power in the state councils of Europe, and fills 
too large a space in the public eye, not to be assailed 
by those whose evil prophecies have been falsified by 
his brilliant reign, and whose lawless schemes have 
been frustrated by his unexampled prudence and 
firmness. 

And what right has he to complain ? If St. Greg- 
ory VII. were obliged to submit for centuries to 
being represented as an ambitious self-seeker and 
unscrupulous politician, instead of a wise and far- 
seeing pontiff, a vanquisher of tyrants, and a self- 
denying saint; if St. Thomas of Canterbury be held 
up, in hundreds of volumes, as a monster of ingrati- 
tude towards a beneficent sovereign, and a haughty 
and overbearing supporter of prelatical tyranny, in- 
stead of a martyr, in defence of religious liberty 
against the encroachments of the civil authority; if 
Cardinal Wolsey be held up to public scorn as a 
proud and selfish prince of the Church, a glutton, and 
a wine-bibber, instead of a skilful administrator of 
government, a liberal patron of learning, and all 
good arts, and the sole restrainer of the evil passions 
of the most shameless tyrant who ever sat upon the 
English throne; if Cardinal Richelieu be handed 
down from generation to generation, painted in the 
blackest colours, as a scheming politician, in whose 
heart, wile and cruelty were mixed up in equal parts, 
instead of a sagacious and inflexible statesman, and 
a patriot who made every thing (even his religion) 
bend to his devotion to the glory of his beloved 
France ; if these great men have been thus misrepre- 
sented in that history which De Maistre aptly calls 

E 166.3 



NAPOLEON THE THIRD 

"a conspiracy against truth,' ' I do not think that 
Napoleon III. can reasonably complain of finding 
himself denounced as a tyrant, a perjurer, and a vic- 
tim of all the bad passions that vex the human heart, 
instead of a liberator of his country from that many- 
headed monstrosity, miscalled the Republique Fran- 
gaise, an unswerving supporter of the cause of law 
and religion, and the architect of the present glory 
and prosperity of France. It must be a great conso- 
lation to the Emperor, under the slanders which 
have been heaped upon him, to reflect that their 
authors and the enemies who hate him worst, are, 
for the most part, infidels and assassins, and enemies 
of social order. Whatever errors a man may com- 
mit, he cannot be far from the course of right so long 
as he is hated and feared by people of that desperate 
stamp. The ancient adage tells us that "a cat may 
look at a king"; and it is, perhaps, a merciful pro- 
vision of the law of compensation that the base 
reptiles which fatten on the offal of slander are per- 
mitted to trail their slime over a name which is the 
synonyme of the power and glory of France. 

When the prejudices of the present day shall have 
died out, the historian will relate how devoted Na- 
poleon III. was to every thing that concerned his 
country's welfare. He will tell of his ceaseless care 
for the most common wants of his people, and of his 
vigilance in enforcing laws against those who 
wronged the poor by their dishonest dealings in the 
necessaries of life. He will relate how promptly he 
turned his back upon nobles and ambassadors to visit 
some of his people who had been overwhelmed by a 
terrible calamity, and will describe the kind, fatherly 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

manner in which he went among them, carrying suc- 
cour and consolation to all. He will not compare the 
Emperor to his great warrior-uncle ; he will contrast 
the two. He will show how the uncle made all 
Europe fear and hate him, and how the nephew con- 
verted his enemies into allies ; how the uncle manured 
the soil of Europe with the bones of his soldiers, and 
the nephew, having given splendid proofs of his 
ability to make war, won for himself the title of "the 
Pacificator of Europe" ; how the uncle, through his 
hot-headed ambition, finally made France the prey of 
a hostile alliance, and the nephew brought the repre- 
sentatives of all the European powers around him in 
his capital to make peace under his supervision. 

The man who, after thirty years of exile and six 
years of close imprisonment, can take a country in 
the chaotic condition in which France found itself 
after the revolution of 1848, and reorganize its gov- 
ernment, place its financial affairs on a better footing 
than they have been before within the memory of 
man, double its commerce, and raise it to the highest 
place among the states of Europe, cannot be an ordi- 
nary man. In 1852, the Emperor said, "France, in 
crowning me, crowns herself;" and he has proved 
the literal truth of his words. He has given France 
peace, prosperity, and a stable government. He has 
imitated Napoleon I. in every one of his great and 
praiseworthy actions in his civil capacity, while he 
has not made a single one of his mistakes. And if 
"he that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that 
taketh a city," this remarkable man, whose self-con- 
trol is undisturbed by his most unparalleled success, 
is destined to be known in history as Napoleon the 
Great. 

C1623 



NAPOLEON THE THIRD 

The character of Napoleon III. is marked by a 
unity and a consistency such as invariably have dis- 
tinguished the greatest men. We can see this con- 
sistency in his fidelity to the cause of law and order, 
whether it be manifested in his services as a special 
constable against the Chartists of England, or as the 
chief magistrate of his nation against the Chartists 
of France. And to this conspicuous virtue of stead- 
fastness he adds a wonderful universality of acquire- 
ments and natural genius. We see him contracting 
favourable loans and averting impending dangers in 
the monetary affairs of France, and it would seem as 
if his early life had been spent amid the clamours of 
the Bourse; we see him concentrating troops in his 
capital against the threats of the revolutionists, or 
designing campaigns against the greatest military 
powers of Europe ; we see him maintaining a perfect 
composure in the midst of deadly missiles which were 
expected to terminate his reign and dynasty, and it 
would seem as if the camp had always been his home, 
and the dangers of the battle-field his familiar asso- 
ciations; we see him buying up grain to prevent 
speculators from oppressing his people during a sea- 
son of scarcity, or imprisoning bakers for a deficiency 
in the weight of their loaves, or regulating the sales 
of meats and vegetables,— and it would seem as if 
he always had been a prudent housekeeper and a pro- 
found student of domestic economy; we see him- lay- 
ing out parks, projecting new streets and public 
buildings, and we question whether he has paid most 
attention to architecture, engineering, or landscape- 
gardening; we see him visiting his subjects when they 
have been overwhelmed by a great calamity, and he 
would seem to have been a disciple of St. Thomas 

D63 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

of Villanueva, or of St. Vincent of Paul ; we see him 
taking the lead amid the chief statesmen and diplo- 
matists of the world, we read his powerful state 
papers and speeches, and we wonder where he ac- 
quired his experience ; we see him, in short, under all 
circumstances, and it appears that there is nothing 
that concerns his country's welfare or glory too diffi- 
cult for him to grapple with, nor any thing affecting 
the happiness of his poorest subject trivial enough 
for him to overlook. By his advocacy of the cause 
of the Church, he has won a place in history by the 
side of Constantine and Charlemagne; by his inter- 
nal policy and care for the needs of his subjects, his 
name deserves to be inscribed with those of St. Louis 
and Alfred. The language which Bulwer has put 
into the mouth of Cardinal Richelieu might be used 
by Napoleon III., and would from him be only the 
language of historical truth :— 

"I found France rent asunder, 
Sloth in the mart and schism within the temple, 
Brawls festering to rebellion, and weak laws 
Rotting away with rust — * * * * 
I have re-created France, and from the ashes 
Civilization on her luminous wings 
Soars phoenix-like to Jove!" 



[1643 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
FOREIGN TRAVEL 

FOREIGN travel is one of the most useful 
branches of our education, but, like a great 
many other useful branches, it appears to be "gone 
through with" by many persons merely as a matter 
of course. It is astonishing how few people out of 
the great number constantly making the tour of 
Europe really carry home any thing to show for it 
except photographs and laces. Foreign travel ought 
to rub the corners off a man's character, and give 
him a polish such as "home-keeping youth" can never 
acquire ; yet how many we see who seem to have in- 
creased their natural rudeness and inconsiderateness 
by a continental trip ! Foreign travel ought to soften 
prejudices, religious or political, and liberalize a 
man's mind; but how many there are who seem to 
have travelled for the purpose of getting up their 
rancour against all that is opposed to their notions, 
making themselves illustrations of Tom Hood's re- 
mark, that "some minds resemble copper wire or 
brass, and get the narrower by going farther." For- 
eign travel, while it shows a man more clearly the 
faults of his own country, ought to make him love 
his country more dearly than before ; yet how often 
does it have the effect of making a man undervalue 
his home and his old friends ! There must be some 

[16511 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

general reason why foreign travel produces its legiti- 
mate fruits in so few instances; and I have, during 
several European tours, endeavoured to ascertain it. 
I am inclined to think that it is a general lack of 
preparation for travel, and a mistaken notion that 
"sight-seeing" is the chief end of travelling. The 
expenses of the passage across the Atlantic are di- 
minishing every year, and when the motive power in 
electricity is discovered and applied, the expense of 
the trip will be a mere trifle; and in view of these 
considerations, I feel that, though I might find a 
more entertaining subject for a letter, I cannot find a 
more instructive one than the philosophy of European 
travel. 

Concerning the expense of foreign travel, there 
are many erroneous notions afloat. There are hun- 
dreds of persons in America— artists, and students, 
and persons of small means— who are held back, 
from what is to them a land of promise, by the mis- 
taken idea that it is expensive to travel in Europe. 
They know that Bayard Taylor made a tour on an 
incredibly small sum, and they think that they have 
not his tact in management, nor his self-denial in 
regard to the common wants of life; but if they will 
put aside a few of their false American prejudices, 
they will find that they can travel in Europe almost 
as cheaply as they can live at home. In America, we 
have an aristocracy of the pocket, which is far more 
tyrannical, and much less respectable, than any aris- 
tocracy of blood on this side of the water; for every 
man feels an instinctive respect for another who can 
trace his lineage back to some brave soldier whose 
deeds have shone in his country's history for cen- 

063 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOREIGN TRAVEL 

turies ; but it requires a peculiarly constituted mind to 
bow down to a man whose chief claim to respect is 
founded in the fact of his having made a large for- 
tune in the pork or dry goods line. Jinkins is a rich 
man; he lives in style, and fares sumptuously every 
day. Jones is one of Jinkins's neighbours; he is not 
so rich as Jinkins, but he feels a natural ambition to 
keep up with him in his establishment, and he does 
so; the rivalry becomes contagious, and the conse- 
quence is, that a score of well-meaning people find, to 
their dismay, at the end of the year, that they have 
been living beyond their means. Now, if people wish 
to travel reasonably in Europe, the first thing that 
they must do is to get rid of the Jones and Jinkins 
standard of respectability. I have seen many people 
who were content to live at home in a very moderate 
sort of way, who, when they came to travel, seemed 
to require all the style and luxury of a foreign prince. 
Such people may go all over Europe, and see very 
little of it except the merest outside crust. They 
might just as well live in a fashionable hotel in Amer- 
ica, and visit Mr. Sattler's cosmoramas. They re- 
semble those unfortunate persons who have studied 
the classics from Anthon's text-books— they have got 
a general notion, but of the mental discipline of the 
study they are entirely ignorant. But let me go into 
particulars concerning the expenses of travelling. I 
know that a person can go by a sailing vessel from 
Boston to Genoa, spend a week or more in Genoa 
and on the road to Florence, pass two or three weeks 
in that delightful city, and two months in Rome, then 
come to Paris, and stay here two or three weeks, 
then go to London for a month or more, and home 

Ci673 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

by way of Liverpool in a steamer, for less than four 
hundred dollars; for I did it myself several years 
ago. During this trip, I lived and travelled respect- 
ably all the time— that is, what is called respectably 
in Europe. I went in the second class cars, and in 
the forward cabins of the steamers. Jones and 
Jinkins went in the first class cars and in the after 
cabins, and paid a good deal more money for the 
same pleasure that cost me so little. I know, too, 
that a person can sail from Boston to Liverpool, 
make a summer trip of two months and a half to 
Paris, via London and the cities of Belgium, and 
back to Boston via London and Liverpool, for a 
trifle over two hundred and fifty dollars. A good 
room in London can be got for two dollars and a 
half a week, in Paris for eight dollars a month, in 
Rome and Florence for four dollars a month, and 
in the cities of Germany for very considerably less. 
And a good dinner costs about thirty cents in Lon- 
don, thirty-five in Paris, fifteen to twenty-five in 
Florence or Rome, and even less in Germany. 
Breakfast, which is made very little of on the conti- 
nent, generally damages one's exchequer to the ex- 
tent of five to ten cents. It will be seen from this 
scale of prices that one can live very cheaply if he 
will; and, as the inhabitants of a country may be sup- 
posed to know the requirements of its climate better 
than strangers, common sense would dictate the 
adoption of their style of living. 

I need not say that some knowledge of the French 
language is absolutely indispensable to one who 
would travel with any satisfaction in Europe. This 
is the most important general preparation that can 

OS] 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOREIGN TRAVEL 

be made for going abroad. Next after it, I should 
place a review of the history of the countries about 
to be visited. The outlines of the history of the 
different countries of Europe, published by the Eng- 
lish Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 
are admirably adapted to this purpose. This gives 
a reality to the scenes you are about to visit that they 
would not otherwise possess; it peoples the very 
roadside for you with heroes. And not only does it 
impart a reality to your travels, but history itself 
becomes a reality to you, instead of being a mere 
barren record of events, hard to be remembered. At 
this time, when the neglect of classical studies is 
apparent in almost every book, newspaper, and mag- 
azine, I am afraid that I shall be thought somewhat 
old-fashioned and out of date, if I say that some 
acquaintance with the Latin classics is necessary be- 
fore a man can really enjoy Italy. Yet it is so; and 
it will be a great satisfaction to any man to find that 
Horace and Virgil, and Cicero and Livy, are some- 
thing more than the hard tasks of childhood. Should 
a man's classical studies, however, be weak, the 
deficiency can be made up in some measure by the 
judicious use of translations, and by Eustace's Clas- 
sical Tour. Murray's admirable hand-books of 
course will supply a vast amount of information; but 
it will not do to trust to reading them upon the spot. 
Some preparation must be made beforehand,— some 
capital is necessary to start in business. "If you 
would bring home the wealth of the Indies, you must 
carry out the wealth of the Indies." It would be 
well, too, for a person about to visit Europe to pre- 
pare himself for a quieter life than he has been lead- 

D69] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

ing at home. I mean, to tone himself down so as to 
be able to enjoy the freedom from excitement which 
awaits him here. It is now more than a year since I 
left America, and likewise more than a year since I 
have seen any disorderly conduct, or a quarrel, or 
even have heard high words between two parties in 
the street, or have known of an alarm of fire. In 
the course of the year, too, I have not seen half a 
dozen intoxicated persons. When we reflect what a 
fruitful source of excitement all these things are in 
America, it will be easy to see that a man may have, 
comparatively, a very quiet life where they are not 
to be found. It will not do any harm, either, to pre- 
pare one's self by assuming a little more considera- 
tion for the feelings of others than is generally seen 
among us, and by learning to address servants with 
a little less of the imperious manner which is so com- 
mon in America. Strange as it may seem, there is 
much less distinction of classes on the continent, than 
in republican America. You are astonished to find 
the broadcloth coat and the blouse interchanging the 
civilities of a "light" in the streets, and the easy, 
familiar way of servants towards their masters is a 
source of great surprise. You seldom see a French- 
man or an Italian receive any thing from a servant 
without thanking him for it.' Yet there appears to 
be a perfectly good understanding between all par- 
ties as to their relative position, and with all their 
familiarity, I have never seen a servant presume 
upon the good nature of his employer, as they often 
do with us. We receive our social habits in a great 
measure from England, and therefore we have got 
that hard old English way of treating servants, as if 

ti70] 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOREIGN TRAVEL 

our object was to make them feel that they are in- 
feriors. So the sooner a man who is going to travel 
on the continent, can get that notion out of his head, 
and replace it with the continental one, which seems 
to be, that a servant, so long as he is faithful in the 
discharge of his duties, is quite as respectable a mem- 
ber of society as his employer, the better it will be 
for him, and the pleasanter will be his sojourn in 
Europe. 

One of the first mistakes Americans generally 
make in leaving for Europe is, to take too much 
luggage. Presupposing a sufficiency of under-cloth- 
ing, all that any person really needs is a good, sub- 
stantial travelling suit, and a suit of black, including 
a black dress coat, which is indispensable for all oc- 
casions of ceremony. The Sistine Chapel is closed to 
frock coats, and so is the Opera— and as for evening 
parties, a man might as well go in a roundabout as 
in any thing but a dress coat. Clothing is at least one 
third cheaper in Europe than it is with us, and any 
deficiency can be supplied with ease, without carrying 
a large wardrobe around with one, and paying the 
charges for extra luggage exacted by the continental 
railways. 

Let us now suppose a person to have got fairly off, 
having read up his classics and his history, and got 
his luggage into a single good-sized valise, — let us 
suppose him to have got over the few days of seasick- 
ness, which made him wish that Europe had been 
submerged by the broad ocean (as Mr. Choate 
would say) or ever he had left his native land,— and 
to have passed those few pleasant days, which every 
one remembers in His Atlantic passage, when the ship 

Ci70 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

was literally getting along "by degrees" on her 
course,— and to have arrived safely in some Eu- 
ropean port. The custom house officers commence 
the examination of the luggage, looking especially 
for tobacco ; and if our friend is a wise man, he will 
not attempt to bribe the officers, as in nine cases out 
of ten he will increase his difficulties by so doing, and 
cause his effects to be examined with double care ; but 
he will open his trunk, and, if he have any cigars, 
will show them to the examiner, and if he have not, 
he will undoubtedly be told to close it again, and will 
soon be on his way to his hotel. I suppose him to 
have selected a hotel before arriving in port— which 
would be done by carefully avoiding those houses 
which make a great show, or are highly commended 
in Murray's guide-books. He will find a neat, quiet 
European hotel a delightful place, after the gilding 
and red velvet of the great caravanseries of his na- 
tive country. If he is going to stop more than a 
single night, he will ask the price of the room to 
which he is shown, and if it seems too expensive, will 
look until he finds one that suits him. When he has 
selected a room, and his valise has been brought up, 
he will probably observe that the servant (if it is 
evening) has lighted both of the candles on the 
mantel-piece. He will immediately blow one of them 
out and hand it to the waiter, with a look that will 
show him that he is dealing with an experienced 
traveller, who knows that he has to pay for can- 
dles as he burns them. When he leaves the hotel, 
he will make it a principle always to carry the uncon- 
sumed candle or candles with him, for use as occa- 
sion may require ; for it is the custom of the country, 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOREIGN TRAVEL 

and will secure him against the little impositions 
which are always considered fair play upon outsiders. 
It is possible that he will find, when he goes to wash 
his hands, that there is no soap in the wash stand, 
and will thank me for having reminded him to carry 
a cake with him rolled up in a bit of oiled silk. When 
he wishes to take lodgings in any city, he will be 
particular to avoid that part of the town where Eng- 
lish people mostly do inhabit, and will be very shy of 
houses where apartments to let are advertised on a 
placard in phrases which the originator probably in- 
tended for English. He will look thoroughly before 
he decides, and so will save himself a great deal of 
dissatisfaction which he might feel on finding after- 
wards that others had done much better than he. 
Besides, "room-hunting" is not the least profitable, 
nor least amusing part of a traveller's experience. 
He will, when settled in his rooms, attend in person 
to the purchase of his candles and his fuel, and to the 
delivery of the same in his apartments; for by so 
doing he will save money, and will see more of the 
common people of the place. 

Of course he will see all the "sights" that every 
stranger is under a sort of moral obligation to see, 
however much it may fatigue him; but he must not 
stop there. He must not think, as so many appear 
to, that, when he has seen the palaces, and picture 
galleries, and gardens, and public monuments of a 
country, he knows that country. He must try to see 
and know as much as he can of the people of the 
country, for they (Louis Quatorze to the contrary, 
notwithstanding) are the state. Let him cultivate 
the habit of early rising, and frequent market places 

Ci73 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

and old parish churches in the twilight of the morn- 
ing, and he will learn more of the people in one 
month than a year of reading or ordinary sight-see- 
ing could teach him. Let him choose back alleys, 
instead of crowded and fashionable thoroughfares 
for his walks; when he falls in with a wandering 
musician and juggler, exhibiting in public, let him 
stop, not to see the exhibition, but the spectators; 
when he goes to the theatre, let him not shut himself 
up in the privacy of a box, but go into the pit, where 
all he will see and hear around him will be full as 
amusing as the performance itself; and when he uses 
an omnibus, let him always choose a seat by the 
driver, in preference to one inside. I have learnt 
more of the religious character of the poorer class in 
Paris, by a visit to a little out-of-the-way church at 
sunrise, than could be acquired by hours of conversa- 
tion with the people themselves. And I have learned 
equally as much of the brutality and degradation of 
the same class in England, by going into a gin-shop 
late at night, calling for a glass of ale, and drinking 
it slowly, while I was inspecting the company. 
There is many a man who travels through Europe, 
communicating only with hotel keepers, couriers, and 
ciceroni, and learning less of the people than he 
could by walking into a market-place alone, and buy- 
ing a sixpence worth of fruit. Yet such men presume 
to write books, and treat not merely of the govern- 
ments of these countries, but of the social condition 
of the people ! I once met a man in Italy, who could 
not order his breakfast correctly in Italian, who 
knew only one Italian, and he was the waiter who 
served him in a restaurant ; and yet this man was a 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOREIGN TRAVEL 

correspondent of a respectable paper in Boston, and 
had the effrontery to write column after column upon 
Italian social life, and to speak of political affairs as 
if he were Cardinal Antonelli's sole confidant. There 
are such people here in Paris now, who send over to 
America, weekly, batches of falsehood about the 
household of the Tuileries, which the intelligent pub- 
lic of America accepts as being true ; for it seems to 
be a part of some people's republicanism to believe 
nothing but evil of a ruler who wears a crown. I 
need not say in this connection, that the traveller who 
wishes to enjoy Europe must put away the habit (if 
he be so unfortunate as to have it) of looking upon 
every thing through the green spectacles of repub- 
licanism, and regarding that form of government as 
the only one calculated to benefit mankind. He must 
remember that the government of his own country is 
a mere experiment, compared with the old monarchies 
of Europe, and he must try to judge impartially be- 
tween them. He must judge each system by its re- 
sults, and if on comparison he finds that there is really 
less slavery in his own country than in Europe; that 
the government is administered more impartially; 
that the judiciary is purer; that there is less of mob 
law and violence, and less of political bargaining and 
trickery, and that life and property are more secure 
in his own country than they are here,— why, he will 
return to America a better republican than before, 
from the very fact of having done justice to the gov- 
ernments of Europe. 

As I have before said, it is better for a traveller to 
endeavour to live as nearly as possible in the manner 
of the inhabitants of the country in which he is so- 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

journing. I do not mean that he should feel bound 
to make as general a use of garlic as some of the 
people of Europe do, for in some places I verily 
believe that a custard or a blanc mange would be 
thought imperfect if they were not seasoned with 
that savory vegetable; but, ceteris being paribus, if 
the general manner of living were followed, the trav- 
eller would find it conducive to health and to econ- 
omy. The habits of life among every people are not 
founded on a mere caprice; and experience proves 
that under the warm sun of Italy, a light vegetable 
diet is healthier and more really invigorating than 
all the roast beef of Old England would be. 

In Europe, no man is ever ashamed of economy. 
Few Englishmen even shrink from acknowledging 
that they cannot afford to do this or that, and on the 
continent profuseness in the use of money is consid- 
ered the sure mark of a parvenu. Every man is free 
to do as he pleases ; he can travel in the first, second, 
or third class on the railways, and not excite the sur- 
prise of any body; and whatever class he may be m y 
he will be treated with equal respect by all. It is well 
to bear this in mind, for, taken in connection with the 
principle of paying for one's room and meals sepa- 
rately according to what one has, it puts it within 
one's power to travel all over Europe for a ridicu- 
lously small sum. You can live in Paris, by going 
over into the Latin quarter, on thirty cents a day, 
and be treated by every body, except your own coun- 
trymen, with as much consideration as if you abode 
among the mirrors and gilding of the Hotel de 
Louvre. Not that I would advise any one to go 
over there for the sake of saving money, and live on 

CI763 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOREIGN TRAVEL 

salads and meats in which it is difficult to have con- 
fidence, when he can afford to do better. I only wish 
to encourage those who are kept from visiting Eu- 
rope by the idea that it requires a great outlay of 
money. You can live in Europe for just what you 
choose to spend, and in a style of independence to 
which America is a total stranger. Every body does 
not know here what every body else has for dinner. 
You may live on the same floor with a man for 
months and years, and not know any more of him 
than can be learned from a semi-occasional meeting 
on the staircase, and an interchange of hat civilities. 
This seems so common to a Frenchman, that it would 
be considered by him hardly worth notice ; but to any 
one who knows what a sharp look-out neighbours 
keep over each other in America, it is a most pleasing 
phenomenon. It is indeed a delightful thing to live 
among people who have formed a habit of minding 
their own business, and at the same time have a spirit 
of consideration for the rights and feelings of their 
neighbours. 

If, in the above hints concerning the way to travel 
pleasantly and cheaply in Europe, I have succeeded 
in removing any of the bugbear obstacles which hold 
back so many from the great advantages they might 
here enjoy, I shall feel that I have not tasked my 
poor eyes and brain for nothing. We are a long 
way behind Europe in many things, and it is only by 
frequent communication that we can make up our 
deficiencies. It cannot be done by boasting, nor by 
claiming for America all the enterprise and enlight- 
enment of the nineteenth century. Neither can it be 
done by setting up the United States as superior to 

D773 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

every historical precedent, and an exception to every 
rule. Most men (as the old French writer says) are 
mortal ; and we Americans shall find that our coun- 
try, with all its prosperity and unequalled progress, 
is subject to the same vicissitudes as the countries we 
now think we can afford to despise ; and that our his- 
tory is 

" but the same rehearsal of the past- 
First Freedom, and then Glory; when that fails, 
Wealth, vice, corruption, — barbarism at last." 

No, we cannot safely scorn the lesson which 
Europe teaches us; for if we do, we shall have to 
learn it at the expense of much adversity and wound- 
ing of our pride. Every American who comes 
abroad, if he knows how to travel, ought to carry 
home with him a new idea of the amenities of life, 
and of moderation in the pursuit and the use of 
wealth, such as will make itself felt in the course of 
time, and make the fast living and recklessness of 
authority and tendency to bankruptcy of the present 
day, give way to a spirit of moderation and obedience 
to law such as always produces private prosperity 
and public stability. 



Ci783 



PARIS TO BOULOGNE 

IT was a delicious morning when I packed my trunk 
to leave Paris. Indeed it was so bright and 
cloudless that it seemed wrong to go away and leave 
so fine a combination of perfections. It was more 
than the "bridal of the earth and sky" ; it was the 
bridal of all the created beings around one and their 
works with the sky. The deep blue of the heavens, 
the glittering sunbeams, the clean streets, the fair 
house fronts, the gay shop windows, the white caps, 
and shining morning faces of the bonnes and market 
women, the busy, prosperous look of the passers by, 
were all blended together in one harmonious whole, 
more touching and poetical than any scene of mere 
natural beauty that the dewy morn, "with breath all 
incense and with cheek all bloom," ever looked upon. 
"Earth hath not any thing to show more fair." 
Others may delight in communing with solitary na- 
ture, and may rave in rhyme about the glories of 
woods, lakes, mountains, and Ausonian skies; but 
what is all that compared to the awakening of a great 
city to the life of day? What are the floods of 
golden light that every morning bathe the mountain 
tops, and are poured down into the valleys and fields 
below, compared to the playing of the sunbeams in 
the smoke from ten thousand chimneys, and the din 
of toil displacing the silence of night? I have seen 
the sunsets of the Archipelago— I have seen Lesbos 

D79] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

and Egina clad in those robes of purple and gold, 
which till then I had thought were a mere figment of 
the painter's brain— I have enjoyed that "hush of 
world's expectation as day died"— I have often 
drunk in the glory of a cloudless sunrise on the At- 
lantic, and even now my heart leaps up at the remem- 
brance of it ; but after all, commend me to the deeper 
and more sympathetic feelings inspired by the dingy 
walls and ungraceful chimney-pots of a metropolis. 
Thousands of human hearts are there, throbbing 
with hope, or joy, or sorrow,— weighed down per- 
chance by guilt; and humanity with all its imperfec- 
tions is a noble thing. A single human heart, though 
erring, is a grander creation than the Alps or the 
Andes, for it shall outlive them. It is moved by aspi- 
rations that outrun the universe, and possesses a 
destiny that shall outlive the stars. It is the better 
side of human nature that we see in the early morn- 
ing in large cities. Vice flourishes best under the 
glare of gas-lights, and does not salute the rising sun. 
The bloated form, the sunken eye, the painted cheek, 
shrink from that which would make their deformity 
more hideous, and hide themselves in places which 
their presence makes almost pestilential. Honest, 
healthful labour meets us at every step, and imparts 
to us something of its own hopefulness and activity. 
We miss the dew-drops glittering like jewels in the 
grass, but the loss is more than made up to us by the 
bright eyes of happy children, helping their parents 
in their work, or sporting together on their way to 
school. 

There'was a time when I 'thought it very poetical 
to roam the broad fields in that still hour when the 

E180] 



PARIS TO BOULOGNE 

golden light seems to clasp every object that it meets, 
as if it loved it; but of late years a comfortable side- 
walk has been more suggestive of poetry and less 
productive of wet feet. Give me a level pavement 
before all your groves and fields. The only rus that 
wears well in the long run is Russ in urbe. Nine 
tenths of all the fine things in our literature concern- 
ing the charms of country life, have been written, not 
beneath the shade of overarching boughs, but within 
the crowded city's smoke-stained walls. Depend 
upon it, Shakespeare could never have written about 
the moonlight sleeping on the bank any where but in 
the city; had the realities of country life been present 
to him, he would have rejected any such metaphor, 
for he loved the moonlight too dearly to subject it to 
the rheumatic attack that would inevitably have 
followed such a nap as that. It is with country life 
very much as it is with life at sea. Mr. Choate, who 
pours out his noblest eloquence on the glories and 
romance of the sea, seldom sees the outside of his 
state-room while he is out of sight of land, and all his 
glowing periods are forgotten in the realities of his 
position. So, too, the man who wishes to destroy 
the poetry and romance of country life, has only to 
walk about in the wet grass or the scorching heat, or 
to be obliged to pick the pebbles out of his shoes, or 
a caterpillar off his neck, or to be mocked at by un- 
ruly cattle, or pestered by any of the myriads of 
insect and reptiles which abound in every well-regu- 
lated country. 

The excellent Madame Busque {la dame aux 
pumpkin pies) had prepared for me a viaticum in 
the shape of a small loaf of as good gingerbread as 

D80 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

was ever made west of Cape Cod— a motherly atten- 
tion quite in keeping with her ordinary way of taking 
care of her customers. All who frequent the creme- 
tie are her enfans, and if she does not show them 
every little maternal attention, and tie a bib upon 
every one's neck, it is only that we may know better 
how to behave when we are beyond the reach of her 
kindly hand. Fortified with the gingerbread, I found 
myself whirling out of the terminus of the Northern 
Railway, and Paris, with its far-stretching fortifica- 
tions, its domes and towers, and its windmill-crowned 
Montmartre, was soon out of sight. 

The train was very full, and the weather very 
warm. Two of my car-companions afforded me a 
good deal of amusement. They were a fat German 
and his wife. He was one of the jolliest old gentle- 
men I ever had the good fortune to travel with. His 
silvery hair was cropped close to his head, and he 
rode along with his cuffs turned up and his waistcoat 
open. He seemed to feel that he was occupying a 
good deal of room; but he was the only one there 
who felt it. No one of us would have had his circum- 
ference reduced an inch, but we should all of us have 
delighted to put a thin man who was there out by the 
roadside. His wife— a bright-eyed little woman, 
whose hair was just getting a little silvery— had a 
small box-cage in which she carried a large, intelli- 
gent-looking parrot. Before we had gone very far, 
the bird began to carry on an animated conversation 
with its mistress, but finally disgusted her and sur- 
prised us all by swearing in French and German at 
the whole company, with all the vehemence of a regi- 
ment of troopers. The lady tried hard to stop him, 

C1823 



PARIS TO BOULOGNE 

but it was useless. The old gentleman (like a great 
many good people who would not swear themselves, 
but rather like to hear a good round oath occa- 
sionally) seemed to enjoy it intensely, and laughed 
till the tears rolled down his cheeks. At noon the 
worthy pair made solemn preparations for a dinner. 
A basket, a carpet-bag, and sundry paper parcels 
were brought out. The lady spread a large checked 
handkerchief over their laps for a table cloth, and 
then produced a staff of life about two feet in length, 
and cut off a good thick slice for each of them. 
Cheese was added to it, and also a species of sausage 
about a foot in length, and three inches in diameter. 
From these they made a comfortable meal— not eat- 
ing by stealth, as we Americans should have done— 
but diving in heartily, and chatting together all the 
while as cosily as if they had been at home. A bottle 
of wine was then brought out from the magic carpet- 
bag, and a glass, also a nice dessert of peaches and 
grapes. There was a charming at-home-ativeness 
about the whole proceeding that contrasted strongly 
with our American way of doing such things, and all 
the other passengers apparently took no notice of it. 
We arrived at Boulogne in the midst of a storm 
as severe as the morning had been serene. So fair 
and foul a day I have not seen. An omnibus whisked 
me to a hotel in what my venerable grandmother 
used to call a jiffy, and I was at once independent of 
the weather's caprices. A comfortable dinner at the 
table d'hote repaired the damages of the journey, 
and I spent the evening with some good friends, 
whose company was made the more delightful by 
the months that had separated us. The storm raged 

D83] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

without, and we chatted within. The old hotel 
creaked and sighed as the blast assailed it, and I 
dreamed all night of close-reefed topsails. 

"Tis a wild night out of doors; 
The wind is mad upon the moors, 
And comes into the rocking town, 
Stabbing all things up and down: 
And then there is a weeping rain 
Huddling 'gainst the window pane; 
And good men bless themselves in bed ; 
The mother brings her infant's head 
Closer with a joy like tears, 
And thinks of angels in her prayers, 
Then sleeps with his small hand in hers." 

Having in former years merely passed through 
Boulogne, I had never known before what a pleasant 
old city it is. Its clean streets and well-built houses, 
and the air of respectable antiquity which pervades 
it, make a very pleasant impression upon the mind. 
As you stand on the quay, and look across at the 
white cliffs on the other side of the Channel, which 
are distinctly visible on a clear day, the differences in 
the character of the two nations so slightly separated 
from one another, strike you more forcibly than ever. 
The very fish taken on the French side of the channel 
are different from any that you see in England; and 
as to the fishwomen, whose sunburnt legs, bare to the 
knee, are the astonishment of all new-comers,— go 
over all Europe, and you will find nothing like them. 
That superb cathedral, the shrine of our Lady of 
Boulogne, upon which the storm of the first French 
revolution beat with such fury, is now beginning to 
wear a look of completion. Its dome, one of the 



PARIS TO BOULOGNE 

loftiest and most graceful in the world, is a striking 
and beautiful feature in the view of the city. For 
more than twelve centuries this has been a famous 
shrine. Kings and princes have visited it, not with 
the pomp and circumstance of royalty, but in the 
humble garb of the pilgrim. Henry VIII. made a 
pilgrimage hither in his unenlightened days, before 
the pious Cranmer had taught him how wicked it was 
to honour the Mother whom his Saviour honoured, 
and how godly and just it was to divorce and put to 
death the mothers of his children. Here it was that 
the heroic crusader, Godfrey, kindled the flame of 
that devotion which nerved his arm against the foes 
of Christianity, and added a new lustre to his 
knightly fame. It is a fashion of the present day to 
sneer at the age of chivalry and the crusades, and 
some of our best writers have been enticed into the 
following of it. While we have so many subjects 
deserving the treatment of the satirist, at our very 
doors,— while we have the fashionable world to 
draw upon,— while we can look around on political 
parsons, professional philanthropists and patriots, 
politicians who talk of principle, and followers who 
are weak enough to believe in them— it would really 
seem as if we might allow the crusaders and trou- 
badours to rest. Supposing, for the sake of argu- 
ment, Christianity to be a true religion,— supposing 
it to be a fact that eighteen hundred years ago the 
plains of Palestine were trodden by the blessed feet 
that were "nailed for our advantage on the bitter 
cross ,, — the redemption of the land which had been 
the scene of the sacred history, from the sacrilegious 
hands of the Saracens, was certainly an enterprise 

D853 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

creditable to St. Louis, and Richard the lion-hearted, 
and Godfrey, and the other gentlemen who sacrificed 
so much in it. It was certainly as respectable an un- 
dertaking as any of the crusades of modern times,— 
as that of the Spaniards in America, the English in 
India, or the United States in Mexico,— with this 
exception, that it was not so profitable. I am afraid 
that some of our modern satirists are lacking in the 
spirit of their profession, and allow themselves to be 
made the mouthpieces of that worldly wisdom which 
it is their office to rebuke. I can see nothing to sneer 
at in the crusader exiling himself from his native 
land, and forfeiting his life in the defence of the 
Holy Sepulchre; indeed, I am inclined to respect a 
man who makes such a sacrifice to a conscientious 
conviction: it is a noble conquest of the visible tem- 
poral by the unseen eternal. I can well understand 
how such efforts for the protection of a mere empty 
tomb would seem worthy of laughter and ridicule to 
those who can find no food for satire in the auri sacra 
fames which has been the motive of modern foreign 
expeditions. It would be well for the world could 
we bring back something of that age of chivalry 
which Edmund Burke regretted so eloquently. We 
need it sorely; for we are every day sliding farther 
down from its high standard of honour and of un- 
selfish devotion to principle. 

There is a little fishing village about a mile and a 
half from Boulogne, on the sea coast towards Calais, 
which is celebrated in history as having been the 
scene of the landing of Prince Louis Napoleon and 
his companions in their unsuccessful attempt to over- 
throw the government of Louis Philippe. Napoleon 

D86] 



PARIS TO BOULOGNE 

III. has not distinguished the spot by any memorial; 
but he has erected a colossal statue of Napoleon I. 
on the spot where that insatiable conqueror, with his 
mighty army around him, looked longingly at the 
coast of England. There is something of a contrast 
between the day thus commemorated and that on 
which the "nephew of his uncle" received Queen 
Victoria at Boulogne, when she visited France. It 
must have been a great satisfaction to Louis Na- 
poleon, after his life of exile, and particularly after 
the studied neglect which he experienced from the 
English nobility, to have welcomed the British Queen 
to his realm with that kiss which is the token of 
equality among sovereigns. Waterloo must have 
been blotted out when he saw the Queen— in whose 
realm he had served the cause of good order in the 
rank of special constable — bending down at his knee 
to confer upon him the order of the garter. 

In spite of its geographical situation, Boulogne 
can hardly be considered a French town. The police 
department and the custom house are in the hands of 
the French, to be sure; but in the course of a walk 
through its streets, you hear much more of the Eng- 
lish than of the French language. You meet those 
brown shooting jackets, and checked trousers, and 
thick shoes and gaiters that are at home every where 
in the "inviolate island of the sage and free." You 
cannot turn a corner without coming upon some of 
those beefy and beery countenances which symbolize 
so perfectly the genius of British civilization, and 
hearing the letter H exasperated to a wonderful de- 
gree. Every where you see bevies of young ladies 
wearing those peculiar brown straw hats, edged with 

Ci873 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

black lace, with a brown feather put in horizontally 
on one side of the crown, a style of head dress to 
which the French and Italians have given the name 
of "Ingleesh spoken here" There is a large class 
among the English population of Boulogne upon 
which the disinterested spectator will look with in- 
terest and with pity. I mean those unfortunate per- 
sons who have been obliged by "force of circum- 
stances' < and the importunity of creditors to exile 
themselves for a time from their native land. You 
see them on every side; and all ranks in society are 
represented among them, from the distinguished- 
looking man, with the tortoise-shell spectacles, who 
ran through his wife's property at the club, to the 
pale, unhappy-looking fellow in the loose thread 
gloves and sleepless coat. You can distinguish them 
at a glance from their fellow-countrymen who have 
gone over for purposes of recreation, the poor devils 
walk about with such an evident wish to appear to be 
doing something or going somewhere. The condi- 
tion of the prisoners, or rather the "collegians," in 
the old Marshalsea prison, must have been an en- 
viable one, compared to these unfortunates, con- 
demned to gaze at the cliffs of Old England from a 
distance, and wait vainly for something to turn up. 

The arrival and departure of the English steam- 
ers is the only source of excitement that the quiet city 
of Boulogne possesses. I was astonished to find, 
after being there a day or two, what an interest I 
took in those occurrences. I found myself on the 
quay with the rest of the foreign population of the 
town, an hour before the departure of the boat, to 
make sure, like every body else there, that not a 

D88] 



PARIS TO BOULOGNE 

traveller for England should escape my notice. Be- 
sides the pleasure of inspecting the motley crowd of 
spectators, I was gratified one day to see the big, 
manly form and good-natured ugly face of Thack- 
eray, following a leathern portmanteau on its path 
from the omnibus to the boat. The great satirist 
took an observation of the crowd through his spec- 
tacles as if he were making a mental note, to be over- 
hauled in due season, and then hurried on board, as if 
he longed to get back to London among his books. 
He had been spending the warm season at the baths 
of Hombourg. But the great excitement of the day 
is the arrival of the afternoon boat from Folkestone. 
It is better as an amusement than many plays that I 
have seen, and it has this advantage, (an indispensa- 
ble one to a large part of the English population of 
Boulogne,) that it costs nothing. During the days 
when I was there, the equinoctial gale was in full 
blow, and, of course, there was a greater rush than 
usual to the quay. It was necessary to go very early 
to secure a good place. From the steamer to the 
passport office, a distance of two or three hundred 
feet, ropes were stretched to keep back the spec- 
tators, forming an avenue some thirty feet wide. 
Through this the wretched victims of the "chop sea" 
of the Channel were obliged to pass, and listen to the 
remarks or laughter which their pitiable condition 
excited among the crowd of their disinterested coun- 
trymen. Any person who has ever been seasick can 
imagine what it would be to go on shore from a boat 
that has just been pitching and rolling about in the 
most absurd manner, and try to walk like a Chris- 
tian, with the eyes of several hundred amusement- 

[189 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

seeking people fixed upon him. Sympathy is entirely 
out of the question. The pallid countenance and 
uncertain step, as if the walker were waiting for the 
pavement to rise to meet his foot, excite nothing but 
mirth in the spectators. The whole scene, including 
the lookers-on, was one of the funniest things I ever 
saw. The observations of the crowd, too, were well 
calculated to heighten the effect. "Ease her when 
she pitches," cried out a youngster at my side, as an 
old lady, who was supported by a gentleman and a 
maid servant, seemed to be trying to accommodate 
herself to the motion of the street, and testify her 
love for terra fir ma by lying down. "Hard a' star- 
board," shouted another, as a gentleman, with a felt 
hat close reefed to his head with a white handker- 
chief, sidled along up the leeward side of the passage 
way. "That 'ere must 'a been a sewere case of sick- 
ness," said a little old man, in an advanced state of 
seediness, as a tall man, looking defiance at the 
crowd, walked ashore with a carpet-bag in his hand, 
and an expression on his face very like that of Mr. 
Warren, in the farce, when he says, "Shall I slay him 
at once, or shall I wait till the cool of the evening?" 
"Don't go yet, Mary," said a young gentleman in a 
jacket and precocious hat, to his sister, who seemed 
to fear that it was about to begin to rain again, — 
"don't go yet ; the best of all is to come ; there 's a fat 
lady on board who has been so sick — we must wait 
to see her!" And so they went on, carrying out in 
the most exemplary manner that golden rule which, 
applied to the period of seasickness, enjoins upon us 
that we shall do unto others just as others would do 
to us. 

D9o3 



PARIS TO BOULOGNE 

It is no joke to most people to cross the Channel at 
any time, but to cross it on the tail-end of the equinoc- 
tial storm is far from being a humorous matter. I 
had crossed from almost all the ports between Havre 
and Rotterdam in former years ; so I resolved to try 
a new route in spite of the weather, and booked my- 
self for a passage in the boat from Boulogne to Lon- 
don, direct. The steamer was called the Seine ; and 
when we had once got into the open sea, a large part 
of the passengers seemed to think that they were 
insane to have come in her. She was a very good 
sea-boat, but I could not help contrasting her with 
our Sound and Hudson River steamers at home. If 
the "General Steam Navigation Company" were to 
import a steamer from America like the Metropolis 
or the Isaac Newton, there would be a revolution in 
the travelling world of England. The people here 
would no longer put up with steamers without an 
awning or any shelter from sun or rain. After they 
had enjoyed the accommodations of one of our great 
floating hotels, they would not think of shutting 
themselves up in the miserable cabins which people 
pay so dearly for here. But to proceed: when we 
got fairly out upon the wasty deep, I ventured to 
gratify my curiosity, as a connoisseur in seasickness, 
by a visit to the cabin. If I were in the habit of writ- 
ing for the newspapers, I suppose I should say that 
the scene "baflled description." It certainly was one 
that I shall not soon forget. The most rabid repub- 
lican would have been satisfied with the equality that 
prevailed there. The squalls that assailed us on deck: 
were nothing compared to the demonstrations of a 
whole regiment of infantry below, who were illus- 

Ci90 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

trating, in a manner worthy of Retsch, one of the 
first lines in Shakespeare's Seven Ages. Ladies of 
all ages were keeled up on every side in various pos- 
tures of picturesque negligence, and with a forgetful- 
ness of the conventionalities of society quite charming 
to look upon. The floor, where it was unoccupied by 
prostrate humanity, was nearly covered with hat- 
boxes, and bonnets, and bowls, and anonymous ar- 
ticles of crockery ware, which were performing a 
lively quadrille, being assisted therein by the motion 
of the ship. But a little of such sights, and sounds, 
and smells as these goes a great way with me, and I 
was glad to return to the wet deck. They had man- 
aged to rig a tarpaulin between the paddle-boxes, 
and there I took refuge until the rain ceased. It was 
comparatively pleasant weather when we sailed past 
Walmer Castle, where that old hero died on whom 
all the world has conferred the title of "The Duke" ; 
and of course there was no rough sea as soon as we 
got into the Downs. Black-eyed Susan might have 
gone on board of any of the fleet of vessels that were 
lying there without discolouring her ribbons by a 
single dash of spray. Ramsgate and Margate (the 
Newport and Cape May of England) looked full of 
company as we sailed by them, and crowds of bathers 
were battling with the surf. The heavy black yards 
of the ships of war loomed up at Sheerness in the 
distance, and suggested thoughts of Nelson, and 
Dibdin, and Ben Bowlin. Now and then we passed 
by some splendid American clipper ship towing up or 
down the river, and I felt proud of my nationality as 
I contrasted her graceful lines and majestic propor- 
tions with the tub-like models of British origin that 

D92 3 



PARIS TO BOULOGNE 

every where met my eye. The dock-yards of Wool- 
wich seemed like a vast ant-hill for numbers and 
busy life. Greenwich, with its fine architecture and 
fresh foliage in the distance, was most grateful to 
my eyes; and it was pleasing to reflect, as I passed the 
observatory, that I could begin to reckon my longi- 
tude to the westward, for it made me feel nearer 
home. 



D93 3 



LONDON 

NO man can really appreciate the grandeur of 
London until he has approached it from the 
sea. The sail up the river from Gravesend to Lon- 
don Bridge is a succession of wonders, each one 
more overwhelming than that which preceded it. 
There is no display of fortifications; but here and 
there you see some storm-tossed old hulk, which, hav- 
ing finished its active career, has been safely anchored 
in that repose which powder magazines always en- 
joy. As the river grows narrower, the number of 
ships, steamers, coal barges, wherries, and boats of 
every description, seems to increase ; and as you sail 
on, the grand panorama of the world-wide com- 
merce of this great metropolis unfolds before you, 
and you are lost, not so much in admiration as in 
astonishment. Woolwich, Greenwich, Rotherhithe, 
Bermondsey, Blackwall, Millwall, Wapping, &c, 
follow rapidly in the vision, like the phantom kings 
before the eyes of the unfortunate Scotch usurper, 
until one is tempted to inquire with him, whether the 
"line will stretch out to the crack of doom." The 
buildings grow thicker and more unsightly as you 
advance ; the black sides of the enormous warehouses 
seem to be bulging out over the edge of the wharves 
on which they stand; far off, beyond the reach of the 
tides, you see the forests of masts that indicate the 
site of the docks. The bright green water of the 

CI943 



LONDON 

Channel has been exchanged for the filthy, drain-like 
current of the Thames. Hundreds of monstrous 
chimneys belch forth the smoke that constitutes the 
legitimate atmosphere of London. Every thing 
seems to be dressed in the deepest mourning for the 
cruel fate of nature, and you look at the distant hills 
and bright lawns, over in the direction of Sydenham, 
with very much of the feeling that Dives must have 
had, when he gazed on the happiness of Lazarus 
from his place of torment. Every thing presents a 
most striking contrast to the clean, fair cities of the 
continent. Paris, with its cream-coloured palaces 
adorning the banks of the Seine, seems more beauti- 
ful than ever as you recall it while surrounded by 
such sights, and sounds, and smells, as offend your 
senses here. The winding Arno, and the towers, and 
domes, and bridges, of Florence and Pisa, seem to 
belong to a celestial vision rather than to an earthly 
reality, as you contrast them with the monuments of 
England's commercial greatness. At last, you come 
in sight of London Bridge, with its never-ceasing 
current of vehicles and human beings crossing it ; and 
your amazement is crowned by realizing that, not- 
withstanding the wonders you have seen, you have 
just reached the edge of the city, and that you can 
ride for miles and miles through a closely-built laby- 
rinth of bricks and mortar, hidden under the veil of 
smoke before you. 

And what a change it is— from Paris to London! 
To a Frenchman it must be productive of a suicidal 
feeling. The scene has shifted from the sunny 
Boulevards to the blackened bricks and mortar, 
which neither great Neptune's ocean, nor Lord Pal- 

D95 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

merston's anti-smoke enactment can wash clean. In 
the place of the smiling, good-humoured Frenchman, 
you have the serious, stately Englishman. One 
misses the winning courtesy of which a Frenchman's 
hat is the instrument, and the ready pardon or merci 
is heard no more. The beggary, the drunkenness, 
and the depravity, so apparent on every side, appall 
one. Paris may be the most immoral city in the 
world; but there, vice must be sought for in its own 
haunts. Here in London, it prowls up and down in 
the streets, seeking for its victims. Put all the other 
European capitals together, and I do not believe that 
you could meet with so much to pain and disgust you 
as you would in one hour in the streets of London. 
And yet, with all this staring people in the face here, 
how do they go to work to remedy it? They pass 
laws enforcing the suspension of business on Sun- 
days, and when they succeed in keeping all the shut- 
ters closed, by fear of the law, they fold their arms, 
and say, "See what a godly nation is this!" If this 
is not "making clean the outside of the cup and plat- 
ter," what is it? For my part, I much prefer that 
perfect religious liberty which allows each man to 
keep Sunday as he pleases ; and the recent improve- 
ment in the observance of the day in France is all the 
more gratifying, because it does not spring from any 
compulsory motive. Let the Jews keep the Sabbath 
as they are commanded to in the Old Testament ; but 
Sunday is the Christian's day, and Sunday is a day of 
festivity and rejoicing, and not of fasting and peni- 
tential sadness. 

Despite the smoke, and the lack of continental 
courtesy which is felt on arriving from France, de- 
ll 196] 



LONDON 

spite the din and hurry, I cannot help loving London. 
The very names of the streets have been made clas- 
sical by writers whose works are a part of our own 
intellectual being. The illustrious and venerable 
names of Barclay and Perkins, of Truman, Hanbury, 
and Buxton, that meet our eyes at every corner, are 
the synonymes of English hospitality and cheer. It 
is a pleasure, too, to hear one's native language 
spoken on all sides, after so many months of French 
twang. The hissing and sputtering English seems 
under such circumstances to be more musical than the 
most elegant phrases of the Tuscan in the mouth of 
a dignified Roman. Even the omnibus conductors' 
talk about the "Habbey," the "Benk," Tgh 'Olborn, 
&c, does not offend the ear, so delightful does it 
seem to be able to say beefsteak instead of biftek. 
The odour of brown stout that prevails every where 
is as fragrant as the first sniff of the land breeze 
after a long voyage. Temple Bar is eloquent of the 
genius of Hogarth, whose deathless drawings first 
made its ugly form familiar to your youthful eyes in 
other lands. The very stones of Fleet Street prate of 
Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith. You walk into Bolt 
Court, and if you feel as I do the associations of the 
place, you eat a chop in the tavern that stands where 
stood the house of Dr. Johnson. Then you cross 
over the way to Inner Temple Lane, and mourn over 
the march of improvement when you see that its 
sacrilegious hand is sweeping away a row of four 
brick houses, which, dilapidated and unsightly as 
they may appear, are dear to every lover of English 
literature. In No. i, formerly dwelt Dr. Johnson; 
in No. 4, Charles Lamb. You walk into the Temple 

D97 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

Church, and muse over the effigies of the knights 
who repose there in marble or bronze, or go into the 
quiet Temple Gardens, and meditate on the wars of 
the red and white roses that were plucked there cen- 
turies ago, before the iron fences were built. It 
would be as difficult to pluck any roses there now as 
the most zealous member of the Peace Society could 
wish. You climb up Ludgate Hill, getting finely 
spattered by the cabs and omnibuses, and find your- 
self at St. Paul's. You smile when you think that 
that black pile of architecture, with its twopenny fee 
of admission, was intended to rival St. Peter's, and 
your smile becomes audible when you enter it, and 
see that while the images of the Saviour and the 
Saints may not be "had and retained," the statues of 
admirals and generals are considered perfectly in 
place there. You walk out with the conviction that 
consistency is a jewel, and tread a pavement that is 
classical to every lover of books. Paternoster Row 
receives you, and you slowly saunter through it. No- 
body walks rapidly through Paternoster Row. Situ- 
ated midway between the bustle and turmoil of 
Ludgate Hill and Cheapside, it is a kind of resting- 
place for pedestrians. They breathe the more quiet 
air of bookland there, and the windows are a tempta- 
tion which few loiterers can withstand. 

The old church of St. Mary le Bow reminds you 
that you are at the very centre of Cockneydom, as 
you walk on towards the Bank and the Exchange. 
Crossing the street at the risk of your life through a 
maze of snorting horses and rattling wheels, you get 
into Cornhill. Here the faces that you see are a 
proof that the anxious, money-getting look is not con- 

ni98;i 



LONDON 

fined to the worshippers of the almighty dollar. You 
push on until you reach Eastcheap. How great is 
your disappointment ! The very name has called up 
all your recollections of the wild young prince and his 
fat friend— but nothing that you see there serves to 
heighten your Shakespearean enthusiasm. Coal- 
heavers and draymen make the air vocal with their 
oaths and slang, which once resounded with the 
laughter of Jack Falstaff and his jolly companions. 
No Mistress Quickly stands in the doorway of any 
of the numerous taverns. The whole scene is a great 
falling-off from what you had imagined of East- 
cheap. The sanded floors, the snowy window cur- 
tains, the bright pewter pots, have given way to dirt 
and general frowsiness. You read on a card in a 
window that within you can obtain u a go of brandy 
for sixpence, and a go of gin for fourpence," and 
that settles all your Falstaffian associations. You 
stop to look at an old brick house which is being 
pulled down, for you think that perhaps its heavy 
timbered ceilings, and low windows, and Guy 
Fawkesy entries date back to Shakespeare's times; 
but you are too much incommoded by the dust from 
its crumbling walls to stop long, and you leave the 
place carrying with you the only reminder of Falstaff 
you have seen there— you leave with lime in your 
sack! 

I know of nothing better calculated to take down 
a man's self-esteem than a walk through the streets 
of London. To a man who has always lived in a 
small town, where every second person he meets is an 
acquaintance, a walk from Hyde Park corner to 
London Bridge must be a crusher. If that does not 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

convince him that he is really of very little impor- 
tance in the world, he is past cure. The whirl of 
vehicles, the throngs upon the sidewalks, seem to 
overwhelm and blot out our own individuality. 
Xerxes cried when he gazed upon his assembled 
forces, and reflected that out of all that vast multi- 
tude not one person would be alive in a hundred 
years. Xerxes ought to have ridden through Oxford 
Street or the Strand on the top of an omnibus. 
Spitalfields and Bandanna (two places concerning 
the geography of which I am rather in the dark) 
could not have furnished him with handkerchiefs to 
dry his eyes. 

I was never so struck with the lack of architec- 
tural beauty in London as I have been during this 
visit. There are, it is true, a few fine buildings- 
Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's, Somerset House, 
&c. ; but they are all as black as my hat, with this 
soot in which all London is clothed; so there is really 
very little beauty about them. The new Houses of 
Parliament are a fine pile of buildings, certainly, and 
the lately finished towers are a pleasing feature in 
the view from the bridges; but they are altogether 
too gingerbready to wear well. They lack boldness 
of light and shade; and this lack is making itself 
more apparent every day as the smoke of the city is 
enveloping them in its everlasting shade. Bucking- 
ham Palace looks like a second rate American hotel, 
and as to St. James, the barracks at West Point are 
far more palatial than that. It is not architecture, 
however, that we look for in London. It has a 
charm in spite of all its deformities,— in spite of its 
climate, which is such an encouragement to the urn- 

[2003 



LONDON 

brella makers-in spite of its smoky atmosphere, 
through which the sun looks like a great copper ball 
—in spite of its mud, which the water-carts insure 
when the dark skies fail in the discharge of their 
daily dues to the metropolis. London, with all thy 
fogs, I love thee still ! It is this great agglomeration 
of towns which we call London— this great human 
family of more than two millions and a half of 
beings that awakens our sympathy. It is the fact 
that through England we Americans trace our rela- 
tionship to the ages that are past. It is the fact that 
we are here surrounded by the honoured tombs of 
heroes and wise men, whose very names have be- 
come, as it were, a part of our own being. These are 
the things that bind us to London, and which make 
the aureola of light that hangs over it at night time 
seem a crown of glory. 

But we must not forget that there is a dark side to 
the picture. There is a serious drawback to all our 
enthusiasm. Poverty and vice beset us at every step. 
Beggary more abject than all the world besides can 
show appeals to us at every crossing. The pale 
hollow cheek and sunken eye tell such a story of want 
as no language can express. The mother, standing 
in a doorway with her two hungry-looking children, 
and imploring the passers-by to purchase some of the 
netting work her hands have executed, is a sight that 
touches your heart. But walk into some of those 
lanes and alleys which abound almost under the 
shadow of the Houses of Parliament and the royal 
residence,— slums "whose atmosphere is typhus, and 
whose ventilation is cholera,"— and the sentiment of 
pity is lost in one of fear. There you see on every 

C201] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

side that despair and recklessness which spring from 
want and neglect. Walk through Regent Street, and 
the Haymarket, and the Strand in the evening^ and 
you shall be astonished at the gay dresses and painted 
cheeks that surround you. The rummy atmosphere 
reechoes with profanity from female lips. ^ From 
time to time you are obliged to shake off the vice and 
crinoline that seek to be companions of your walk. 

There is a distinguished prize-fighter here— one 
Benjamin Caunt. He keeps a gin shop in St. Mar- 
tin's Lane, and rejoices in a profitable business and 
the title of the u Champion of England." He trans- 
acted a little business in the prize-fighting line over 
on the Surrey side of the river a few days ago, and is 
to sustain the honour of England against another 
antagonist to-morrow. During the entire week his 
gin shop has been surrounded by admiring crowds, 
anxious to catch a glimpse of the hero, And such 
crowds ! It would be wronging the lowest of the race 
of quadrupeds to call those people beastly and brutal 
wretches. Most Americans think that the Bowery 
and Five Points can rival almost any thing in the 
world for displays of all that is disgusting in society; 
but London leaves us far behind. I stopped several 
times to note the character of Mr. Caunt's constitu- 
ents. There were men there with flashy cravats 
around necks that reminded me of Mr. Buckminster's 
Devon cattle-their hair cropped close for obvious 
reasons-moving about among the crowd, filling the 
air with damns and brandy fumes. There were 
others in a more advanced stage of "fancy" existence 
-men with all the humanity blotted out of them, not 
a spark of intellect left in their beery countenances. 

C202] 



LONDON 

There were women drabbled with dirt, soggy with 
liquor, with eyes artificially black. There were chil- 
dren pale and stunted from the use of gin, or bloated 
with beer, assuming the swagger of the blackguards 
around them, and looking as old and depraved as 
any of them. It seemed as if hell were empty and all 
the devils were there. The police— those guardians 
of the public weal, who are so efficient when a poor 
woman is trying to earn her bread by selling a few 
apples— so prompt to make the well-intentioned 
"move on"— did not appear to interfere. They evi- 
dently considered the street to be blockaded for a 
just cause, and looked as if, in aiding people to get a 
look at the Champion of England, they were sustain- 
ing the honour of England herself. 

And this is the same England that assumes to 
teach other nations the science of benevolence. This 
is the same England that laments over the tyranny of 
continental governments, and boasts of how many 
millions of Bibles it has sent to people who could not 
read them if they would, and would not if they 
could. This is the same England that turns up the 
whites of its eyes at American slavery, and wishes 
to teach the King of Naples how to govern. Why, 
you can spend months in going about the worst quar- 
ters of the continental cities, and not see so much of 
vice and poverty as you can in the great thorough- 
fares of London in a single day. There is vice 
enough in every large city, as we all know; but in 
most of them it has to be sought for by its votaries— 
in London it goes about seeking whom it may devour. 
The press of England may try to advance the inter- 
ests of a prime minister anxious to get possession of 

C2033 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

Sicily by slandering Ferdinand of Naples ; but every 
body knows, who has visited that fair kingdom, that 
there are few monarchs more public spirited and 
popular with all classes of their subjects than he. 
Every body knows that there is no class in that com- 
munity corresponding to the prize-fighting class in 
London — that the horrors of the mining districts are 
unknown there, and that an English workhouse 
would make even an Englishman blush when com- 
pared with those magnificent institutions that relieve 
the poor of Italy. I had rather be sold at auction in 
Alabama any day than to take my chance as a deni- 
zen of the slums of London, or as a worker in the 
coal mines. I have no patience with this telescopic 
philanthropy of the English, while there are abuses 
all around them so much greater than those that dis- 
grace any other civilized country. What can be more 
disgusting than this pharisaical cant— this thanking 
God that they are not as others are— extortioners 
and slaveholders— when you look at the real condi- 
tion of things? Englishmen always boast that their 
country has escaped the revolutionary storm which 
has so many times swept over Europe during this 
century, and would try to persuade people that there 
is little or no discontent here. The fact is, the lower 
classes in this country have been so ground down by 
the money power and the force of the government, 
and are so ignorant and vicious, that they cannot be 
organized into a revolutionary force. Walk through 
Whitechapel, and observe the people there— con- 
trast them with the blouses in the Faubourg St. An- 
toine— and you will acknowledge the truth of this. 
The people in the manufacturing districts in France 

C204] 



LONDON 

are, indeed, far from being models of morality or of 
intellectual culture ; but they have retained enough of 
the powers of humanity to make them very dan- 
gerous, when collected under the leadership of 
demagogues of the school of Ledru Rollin. But the 
farming districts of France have remained compara- 
tively free from the infection of socialism and in- 
fidelity. The late Henry Colman, in his agricultural 
tour, found villages where almost the entire popula- 
tion went to mass every morning, before commencing 
the labour of the day. But the degradation of the 
labouring classes of England is not confined to the 
manufacturing towns; the peasantry is in a most 
demoralized condition: the Chartist leaders found 
nearly as great a proportion of adherents among the 
farm labourers as among the distressed operatives 
of Birmingham and Sheffield; and Mormonism 
counts its victims among both of those neglected 
classes by thousands. It is, perhaps, all very well for 
ambitious orators to make the House of Commons 
or Exeter Hall resound with their denunciations of 
French usurpations, Austrian tyranny, Neapolitan 
dungeons, Russian serfdom, and American slavery; 
but thinking men, when they note these enthusiastic 
demonstrations of philanthropy, cannot help think- 
ing of England's workhouses, the brutalized workers 
in her coal mines and factories, and her oppressive 
and cruel rule in Ireland and in India ; and it strikes 
them as strange that a country, whose eyesight is 
obstructed by a beam of such extraordinary magni- 
tude, should be so exceedingly solicitous about the 
motes that dance in the vision of its neighbours. 

C2053 



ESSAYS 



STREET LIFE 

THOMAS CARLYLE introduces his philo- 
sophical friend, Herr Teufelsdrockh, to his 
readers, seated in his watch-tower, which overlooks 
the city in which he dwells ; and from which he can 
look down into that bee-hive of human kind, and see 
every thing u from the palace esplanade where music 
plays, while His Serene Highness is pleased to eat 
his victuals, down to the low lane where in her door- 
sill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, 
sits to feel the afternoon sun." He draws an ani- 
mated picture of that busy panorama which is ever 
unrolling before Teufelsdrockh' s eyes, and moralizes 
upon the scene in the spirit of a true poet who has 
struck upon a theme worthy of his lyre. And, most 
assuredly, Thomas is right. The daisies and butter- 
cups are all very well in their way; but, as raw ma- 
terial for poetry, what are they to the deep-furrowed 
pavement and the blackened chimney-pots of a city ! 
In spite of all our pantheistic rhapsodies, man is the 
noblest of natural productions, and the worthiest 
subject for the highest and holiest of poetic raptures. 
My old friend, the late Mr. Wordsworth, delighted 
to anathematize the railway companies, and raved 
finely about Nature never betraying the heart that 
loves her : he said that 

the sounding cataract 



Haunted him like a passion : the tall rock, 
C209] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

The mountain and the deep and gloomy wood, 
Their colours and their forms, were then to him 
An appetite;—" 

and confessed that to him 

the meanest flower that blows could give 



Thoughts that too often lie too deep for tears." 

Yet notwithstanding all this, he was constrained to 
acknowledge when he stood upon Westminster 
Bridge, and saw the vast, dingy metropolis of Britain 
wearing like a garment the beauty of the morning, 
that 

"Earth has not anything to show more fair, — 

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by 

A sight so touching in its majesty." 

When I was a young man, it was my delight to 
brush with early steps the dew away, and meet the 
sun upon the upland lawn. There was a romantic 
feeling about it that I liked, and I did not object to 
wet feet. But I have long since put away that de- 
praved taste, although the recent application of 
India rubber to shoeing purposes has obviated the 
inconvenience of its gratification. Now, I am con- 
tented if I can find a level pavement and a clean 
crossing, and will gladly give up the woods and 
verdant fields to less prosaic and more youthful peo- 
ple. Your gout is a sad interferer with early poetical 
prejudices— but in my own case it has shown me that 
all such things, like most of our youthful notions, are 
mere fallacies. It has convinced me that the poetical 
abounds rather in the smoky, narrow streets of cities, 
than in the green lanes, the breezy hills, and the 

[2103 



STREET LIFE 

broad fields of the country. Like the toad, ugly and 
venomous, that fell disease is not without its jewel. 
It has reconciled me to life in town, and has shown 
me all its advantages and beauties. 

If it be true that "the proper study of mankind is 
man," then are the crowded streets of the city more 
improving and elevating to us (if rightly meditated 
upon) than the academic groves. If you desire so- 
ciety,— in a city you may find it to your taste, how- 
ever fastidious you may be. If you are a lover of 
solitude, where can you be more solitary than in the 
very whirl of a multitude of people intent upon their 
own pursuits, and all unknown to you ! That honey- 
tongued doctor, St. Bernard, said that he was never 
less alone than when alone— a sentiment which, in its 
reversed form, might be uttered by any denizen of a 
metropolis. I always loved solitude : the old monas- 
tic inscription was always a favourite motto of 
mine:— 

"O beata solitudo! 
O sola beatitudo!" 

But I have never found any solitude like the streets 
of a large city. I have walked in the cool, quiet 
cloister of Santa Maria degli Angeli, built amid the 
ruins of the baths of Diocletian, and— though my 
footfall was the only sound save the rustling of the 
foliage, and the song of the birds, and the bubbling 
of a fountain which seemed tired with its centuries of 
service, and which seemed to make the stillness and 
repose of that spacious quadrangle more profound — 
I could not feel so perfectly alone there as I have 
-often felt in the thronged Boulevards or the busy 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

Strand. Place a mere worldling in those holy pre- 
cincts, and he would summon mentally around him 
the companions of his past pleasures, and his world- 
liness would be increased by his thus being driven to 
his only resources for overcoming the ungrateful 
quiet of the place. Introduce a religious man to 
those consecrated shades, and his devotion would be 
quickened; he would soon forget the world which he 
had not loved and which had not loved him, and his 
face would soon be as unwrinkled, his eye as serene, 
as those of the monks who dwell there. But place 
either of them in the most crowded thoroughfare of 
the city, and the worldling would be made for a time 
as meditative as the other. When I was a child, I 
delighted to watch the busy inhabitants of an ant- 
hill, pursuing their various enterprises with an in- 
tentness almost human; and I should be tempted to 
continue my observations of them, were it not that 
the streets of my native city offer me a similar, but a 
more interesting study. Xerxes, we are told, shed 
tears when he saw his army drawn up before him, 
and reflected that not one of all that mighty host 
would be alive a century after. Who could ride from 
Paddington to London Bridge, through the current 
of human life that flows ceaselessly through the 
streets of that great city, without sharing somewhat 
in the feelings of that tender-hearted monarch? 

What are all the sermons that ever were preached 
from a pulpit, compared to those which may be 
found in the stones of a city? When we visit Pom- 
peii and Herculaneum, we are thrilled to notice the 
ruts made by the wheels of chariots centuries ago. 
The original pavement of the Appian Way, now for 



STREET LIFE 

some distance visible, carries us back more than al- 
most any of the other antiquities of Rome, to the 
time when it was trodden by captive kings, and re- 
echoed with the triumphal march of returning con- 
querors. I pity him in whom these things awaken 
no new train of thought. The works of man have 
outlived their builders by centuries, and still remain 
a solemn testimony to the power and the nothingness 
which originated them. Nineveh, Thebes, Troy, 
Carthage, Tyre, Athens, Rome, London, Paris, have 
won the crown in their turn, and have passed or will 
pass away. The dilapidated sculptures of the former 
have been taken to adorn the museums of the latter, 
and crowds have gazed and are gazing on them with 
curious eyes, unmindful of their great lesson of the 
transitoriness of the glory of the world. These are, 
indeed, "sermons in stones" ; but, like most other 
sermons, we look rather at their style of finish, than 
at the deep meaning with which they are so pregnant. 
But I did not take up my pen to write about dead 
cities; I have somewhat to say about the life that 
now renders the streets of our own towns so pleas- 
ant, and makes us so forgetful of their inevitable 
fate. I am not going to claim for the street life of 
our new world the charms which abound in the an- 
cient cities of Europe. We are too much troubled 
about many things, and too utilitarian to give 
thought to those lesser graces which delight us 
abroad, and which we hardly remember until we 
come home and miss them. Our street architecture, 
improved though it may have been within a few 
years, is yet far behind the grace and massive sym- 
metry of European towns. Our builders and real 

[>i33 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

estate owners need to be reminded that it costs no 
more to build in good taste than in bad; that brick 
work can be made as architectural as stone ; and that 
architecture is a great public instructor, whose works 
are constantly open to the public eye, and from 
which we are learning lessons, good or bad, whether 
we will or not. I think it is Goethe who calls archi- 
tecture frozen music. I am glad to see these tall 
piles rearing their ornamented fronts on every side 
of us, even though they are intended for purposes of 
trade; for every one of them is a reproach to the 
untasteful structures around it, and an example 
which future builders must copy, if they do not sur- 
pass. The quaint beauty which charms us in Rouen, 
and in the old towns of Belgium,— the high pitched 
gables leaning over, as if yearning to get across the 
narrow street,— these all belong to another age, and 
we may not possess them; but the architecture 
which, in its simplicity or its magnificence, speaks its 
adaptedness to our climate and our social wants, is 
within our reach, and is capable of making our cities 
equal to any in the world. 

I have a great liking for streets. In the freshness 
of morning, the glare of noonday, and the coolness 
of evening, they have an equal charm for me. I like 
that market-carty period of the day, before Labour 
has taken up his shovel and his hoe, before the sun 
has tipped the chimneys with gold, and reinspired the 
dolorous symphony of human toil, just as his earliest 
beams were wont to draw supernal melodies from 
old Memnon's statue. There is a holy quiet in that 
hour, which, could we preserve it in our minds, would 
keep us clear from many a wrong and meanness, into 

OH] 



STREET LIFE 

which the bustle and the heat of passion betray us, 
and would sanctify our day. In that time, the city 
seems wrapped in a silent ecstasy of adoration. The 
incense of its worship curls up from innumerous 
chimneys, and hangs over it like the fragrant cloud 
which hovers over the altars where saints have 
prayed, and religion's most august rites have been 
celebrated for centuries. In the continental cities, 
large numbers of people may be seen at that early 
hour repairing to the churches. They are drawn to- 
gether by no spasmodic, spiritual stimulation; they 
do not assemble to hear their fellow-sinners tell with 
nasal twang how bad they were once, and how good 
they are now, nor to implore the curse of Heaven 
upon those who differ from them in their belief or 
disbelief. ^ They kneel beneath those consecrated 
arches, joining in a worship in which scarce an au- 
dible word is uttered, and drawing from it new 
strength to tread the thorns of life. In our own 
cities, too, people— generally of the poorer classes- 
may be seen wending their way in the early morning 
to churches and chapels, humbler than the marble 
and mosaic sanctuaries of Europe, but one with them 
in that faith and worship which radiates from the 
majestic Lateran basilica, {omnium urbis et orbis 
ecclesiarum mater et caput,) and encircles the world 
with its anthems and supplications. 

A little later in the morning, and the silence is 
broken t>y the clattering carts of the dispensers of 
that fluid without which custards would be impos- 
sible. The washing of doorsteps and sidewalks, too, 
begins to interfere with your perambulations, and to 
dim the lustre which No. 97, High Holborn, has im- 

C2153 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

parted to your shoes. Bridget leans upon her wet 
broom, and talks with Anne, who leaves her water- 
pail for a little conference, in which the affairs of the 
two neighbouring families of Smith and Jenkins re- 
ceive, you may be sure, due attention. Men smoking 
short and odorous pipes, and carrying small, mys- 
terious-looking tin pails, begin to awaken the echoes 
with their brogans, and to prove him a slanderer who 
should say they have no music in their soles. News- 
paper carriers, bearing the damp chronicles of the 
world's latest history bestrapped to their sides, hurry 
along, dispensing their favours into areas and door- 
ways, seasoning my friend Thompson's breakfast 
with the reports of the councils of kings, or with the 
readable inventions of "our own correspondent," and 
delighting the gentle Mrs. Thompson with a full list 
of deaths and marriages, or another fatal railway 
accident. Then the omnibuses begin to rattle and 
jolt along the streets, carrying such masculine loads 
that they deserve for the time to be called mail 
coaches. Later, an odour as of broiled mackerel 
salutes the sense ; school children, with their shining 
morning faces, begin to obstruct your way, and the 
penny postman, with his burden of joy and sorrow, 
hastens along and rings peremptorily at door after 
door. Then the streets assume by degrees a new 
character. Toil is engaged in its workshops and in 
by-places, and staid respectability, in its broadcloth 
and its glossy beaver, wends its deliberate way to its 
office or its counting-house, unhindered by aught that 
can disturb its equanimity, unless, perchance, it meets 
with a gang of street-sweepers in the full exercise of 
their dusty avocation. 

C2163 



STREET LIFE 

Who can adequately describe that most inalien- 
able of woman's rights— that favourite employment 
of the sex— which is generally termed shopping? 
Who can describe the curiosity which overhauls a 
wilderness of dress patterns, and the uncomplaining 
patience of the shopman who endeavours to suit the 
lady so hard to be suited,— his well-disguised disap- 
pointment when she does not purchase, and her hus- 
band's exasperation when she does? Not I, most 
certainly, for I detest shops, have little respect for 
fashions, lament the necessity of buying clothes, and 
wish most heartily that we could return to the 
primeval fig-leaves. 

I love the by-streets of a city— the streets whose 
echoes are never disturbed by the heavy-laden 
wagons which bespeak the greatness of our manu- 
facturing interests. Formerly the houses in such 
streets wore an air of sobriety and respectability, and 
the good housewifery which reigned within was sym- 
bolized by the bright polish of the brass door-plate, 
or bell-pull, or knocker. Now they are grown more 
pretentious, and the brass has given place to an out- 
ward and visible sign of silver. But the streets 
retain their old characteristics, and are strangers to 
any sound more inharmonious than the shouts of 
sportive children, or the tones of a hand-organ. I do 
not profess to be a musical critic, but I have been 
gifted by nature with a tolerable idea of time and 
tune; yet I am not ashamed to say that I do not 
despise hand-organs. They have given me "Sweet 
Home" in the cities of Italy, Yankee Doodle in the 
Faubourg St. Germain; and the best melodies of 
Europe's composers are daily ground out under my 

C2I73 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

windows. I have no patience with these canting peo- 
ple who talk about productive labour, and who see in 
the organ-grinder who limps around, looking up ex- 
pectantly for the remunerating copper, only a vaga- 
bond whom it is expedient for the police to counsel 
to "move on." These peripatetic dispensers of har- 
mony are full as useful members of society as the 
majority of our legislators, and have a far more 
practical talent for organization. Douglas Jerrold 
once said that he never saw an Italian image mer- 
chant, with his Graces, and Venuses, and Apollos at 
sixpence a head, that he did not spiritually touch his 
hat to him : "It is he who has carried refinement into 
the poor man's house; it is he who has accustomed 
the eyes of the multitude to the harmonious forms of 
beauty." Let me apply these kindly expressions of 
the dead dramatist and wit to the organ-grinders. 
They have carried music into lanes and slums, which, 
without them, would never have known any thing 
more melodious than a watchman's rattle, and have 
made the poorest of our people familiar with har- 
monies that might "create a soul under the ribs of 
death." Occasionally their music may be instrumen- 
tal in producing a feeling of impatience, so that I 
wish that their "Mary Ann" were married off, and 
that Norma would "hear," and make an end of it; 
but my better feelings triumph in the end, and I 
would not interfere with the poor man's and the 
children's concert to hear a strain from St. Cecilia's 
viol. Let the grinders be encouraged ! May the evil 
days foretold in ancient prophecy never come among 
us, when the grinders shall cease because they are 
few! 

OS] 



STREET LIFE 

It is at evening that the poetic element is found 
most abundant in the streets of cities. There is to 
me something of the sublime in the long lines of glit- 
tering shop-windows that skirt Regent Street and the 
Boulevards. Dr. Johnson exhorted the people who 
attended the sale of his friend Thrale's brewery, 
to remember that it was not the mere collection of 
boilers, and tubs, and vats which they saw around 
them, for which they were about to bargain, but "the 
potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of 
avarice"; and, in a similar spirit, I see in the shop 
windows not merely the silks and laces, and the other 
countless luxuries and wonders which delight the eye 
of taste and form the source of wealth to multitudes, 
but a vast exposition of the results of that industry, 
which, next to religion and obedience to law, is the 
surest foundation of national greatness, and which 
shows us, behind the frowning Providence that laid 
on man the curse of labour, the smiling face of divine 
beneficence. There, in one great collection, may be 
seen the fruits of the toil of millions. To produce 
that gorgeous display, artists have cudgelled their 
weary brains; operatives have suffered; ship-masters 
have strained their eyes over their charts and daily 
observations, and borne patiently with the provoking 
vagaries of the u lee main brace"; sailors have 
climbed the icy rigging and furled the tattered top- 
sails with hands cracked and bleeding; for that, long 
trains of camels freighted with the rich products of 
the golden East, "from silken Samarcand to cedared 
Lebanon," have toiled with their white-turbaned 
drivers across the parching desert ; thousands of busy 
hands have plied the swift shuttle in the looms of 

C2I93 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

Brussels, and Tournai, and Lyons ; and thousands in 
deep and almost unfathomable mines have suffered a 
living death. Manchester and Birmingham have 
been content to wear their suit of mourning that 
those windows may be radiant and gay. The tears, 
and sweat, and blood of myriads have been poured 
out behind those shining panes transmuted into 
shapes that fill the beholder with wonder and delight. 
"In our admiration of the plumage we forget the 
dying bird." Nevertheless, above the roar and 
bustle of those whirling thoroughfares, above the 
endless groan and "infinite fierce chorus" of manhood 
ground down, and starving in bondage more cruel 
because it does not bear the name of slavery, I hear 
the carol of virtuous and well-rewarded labour, and 
the cheerful song of the white-capped lace-makers of 
Belgium and the vine-dressers of Italy reminds me 
that powerful wrong does not have every thing its 
own way even in this world. 

I did intend to have gone farther in my evening 
walk; but time and space alike forbid it. I wished to 
leave the loud roaring avenues for those more quiet 
streets, where every sight and sound speak of domes- 
tic comfort, or humble fidelity, or patient effort; 
where the brilliancy of splendid mansions is but im- 
perfectly veiled by rich and heavy draperies; where 
high up gleams the lamp of the patient student, 
happy in his present obscurity because he dreams of 
coming fame; and where the tan on the pavement 
and the mitigated light from the windows are 
eloquent of suffering and the sleepless affection that 
ministers to its unspoken wants. But I must stop. 
If, however, I have shown one of my readers, who 

C220] 



STREET LIFE 

regrets that he is obliged to dwell in a city, that there 
is much that is beautiful in paved streets and smoke- 
stained walls, and that, if we only open our eyes to 
see them, even though the fresh fields and waving 
woods may be miles away, the beauties of nature 
daily fold us in their bosom, — I shall feel that I have 
not tasked my tired brain and gouty right hand en- 
tirely in vain. 



£221] 



HARD UP IN PARIS 

MONEY, whatever those who affect misan- 
thropy or a sublime superiority to all tem- 
poral things may say to the contrary, is a very 
desirable thing. We all enjoy the visit of the great 
Alexander to the contented inhabitant of the imper- 
ishable tub, who was alike independent of the good 
will and displeasure of that mighty monarch; we 
sympathize with all the bitter things that Timon says 
when he is reduced from wealth to beggary; and we 
are never tired of lamenting, with Virgil, that the 
human heart should be such an abject prey to this 
accursed hunger for gold. I am not sure that Horace 
would not be dearer to us, if he had lived in a "three- 
pair-back" in some obscure street, and his deathless 
odes had been inspired by fear of a shrewish land- 
lady or an inexorable sheriff, instead of being an 
honoured guest at the imperial court, and a recipient 
of the splendid patronage of a Maecenas and an 
Augustus. Poetical justice seems to require a setting 
of the most cheerless poverty for the full develop- 
ment of the lustre of genius. At least, we think so, 
at times ; — though, under it all, admire as we may the 
successful struggles of the want-stricken bard,— we 
do not envy him his penury. We should shrink from 
his gifts and his fame, if they were offered to us with 
his sufferings. For underneath our abstract mag- 
nanimity lurks the conviction that money is by no 

E>22] 



HARD UP IN PARIS 

means a bad thing, after all. Our enthusiasm is 
awakened by contemplating the self -forgetful career 
of Francis of Assisi, who chose Poverty for his bride, 
and whose name is in benediction among men, even 
six centuries after he entered into possession of that 
kingdom which was promised to the poor in spirit; 
and, if we should chance to see a more modern bearer 
of that Christian name, who worshipped the wealth 
which the ancient saint despised ; who trampled down 
honest poverty in his unswerving march towards opu- 
lence; who looked unmoved upon the tears of the 
widow and the orphan; who exercised his sordid 
apostolate even to the last gasp of his miserable life ; 
and whose name (unblessed by the poor, and unhon- 
oured by canonization) became, in the brief period 
that it outlived him, a byword and a synonyme of 
avarice,— we should not fail to visit his memory with 
a cordial malediction. But, in spite of all our venera- 
tion for Francis, the apostle of holy poverty, and of 
loathing for his namesake, the apostle of unholy 
wealth, we cannot help wishing that we had a little 
more of that which the Saint cast away, and the miser 
took in exchange for his soul. 

A little more— that is the phrase— and there is no 
human being, rich or poor, who does not think that 
u a little more" is all that is needed to fill up the 
measure of his earthly happiness. It is for this that 
the gambler risks his winnings, and the merchant 
perils the gains of many toilsome years. For this, 
some men labour until they lose the faculty of enjoy- 
ing the fruit of their exertions ; and this is the ignis, 
fatuus that goes dancing on before others, leading 
them at last into that bog of bankruptcy from which 

O23;] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

they never wholly extricate themselves. Enough is 
a word unknown in the lexicon of those who have 
once tasted the joy of having money at interest, and 
there are very few men who practically appreciate 
the wisdom of the ancient dramatist who tells us that 

"He is most rich who stops at competence, — 
Not labours on till the worn heart grows sere, — 
Who, wealth attained, upon some loftier aim 
Fixes his gaze, and never turns it backward." 

"Give me neither poverty nor riches," has been my 
prayer through life, as it was that of the ancient 
sage ; and it has always been my opinion that a man 
who owns even a single acre of land within a conve- 
nient distance of State Street or of the Astor House, 
is just as well off as if he were rich. My petition has 
been answered : but it must be confessed that when I 
mouse in the book shops, or turn over the rich port- 
folios of the print dealers, I feel that I am poor in- 
deed. I do not envy him who can adorn the walls of 
his dwelling with the masterpieces of ancient or 
modern art on their original canvas; but I do crave 
those faithful reproductions which we owe to the 
engraver's skill, and which come so near my grasp 
as to aggravate my covetousness, and make me speak 
most disrespectfully of my unelastic purse. 

Few people have spent any considerable time 
abroad without being for a season in straitened cir- 
cumstances. A mistake may have been made in reck- 
oning up one's cash, or a bill may be longer than was 
expected, or one's banker may temporarily suspend 
payment; and suddenly he who never knew a mo- 
ment's anxiety about his pecuniary affairs finds billi- 
es 3 



HARD UP IN PARIS 

self wondering how he can pay for his lodgings, and 
where his next day's beefsteak is coming from. It 
was my good fortune once to undergo such a trial in 
Paris. I say good fortune — for, unpleasant as it was 
at the time, it was one of the most precious experi- 
ences of my life. I do not think that a true, manly 
character can be formed without placing the subject 
in the position of a ship's helm, when she is in danger 
of getting aback; to speak less technically, he must 
(once in his life, at least) be hard up. 

I was younger in those days than I am now, and 
was living for a time in the gay capital of France. 
My lodgings were in one of those quiet streets that 
lead to the Place Ventadour, in which the Italian 
Opera House stands. My room was about twelve 
feet square, was handsomely furnished, and deco- 
rated with a large mirror, and a polished oaken floor 
that rivalled the mirror in brilliancy. Its window 
commanded an unobstructed view of a court-yard 
about the size of the room itself; but, as I was pretty 
high up (on the second floor coming down) my light 
was good, and I could not complain. As I write, it 
seems as if I could hear the old concierge blacking 
boots and shoes away down at the bottom of that 
well of a court-yard, enlivening his toil with an occa- 
sional snatch from some old song, and now and then 
calling out to his young wife within the house, with a 
clear voice, "Marie!"— the accent of the final syl- 
lable being prolonged in a preternatural manner. 
And then out of the same depths came a melodious 
response from Marie's blithesome voice, that made 
me stop shaving to enjoy it— a voice that seemed in 
perfect harmony with the cool breath and bright sky 

[225] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

of that sunny spring morning. Marie was a repre- 
sentative woman of her class. I do not believe that 
she could have been placed in any honest position, 
however high, that she would not have adorned. Her 
simplicity and good nature conciliated the good will 
of every one who addressed her, and I have known 
her quiet, lady-like dignity to inspire even some loud 
and boastful Americans, who called on me, with a 
momentary sentiment of respect. They appeared 
almost like gentlemen for two or three minutes after 
speaking with her. Upon my honour, sir, it was 
worth considerably more than I paid for my room to 
have the privilege of living under the same roof with 
such a cheery sunbeam — to see her seated daily at the 
window of the concler gerle with a snow-white cap on 
her head and a pleasant smile on her face ; to inter- 
rupt her sewing, with an inquiry whether any letters 
had come for me, and be charmed with her alacrity 
in handing me the expected note, and the key of 
numero dix-huit. Her nightly Bon soir, M'sieur, was 
like a benediction from a guardian angel; her viva- 
cious Bon jour was an augury of an untroubled day; 
it would have made the darkest, foggiest November 
afternoon seem as bright, and fresh, and exhilarat- 
ing as a morning in June. These are trifles, I know, 
but it is of trifles such as these that the true happiness 
of life is made up. Great joys, like great griefs, do 
not possess the soul so completely as we think, as 
Wellington victorious, or Napoleon defeated, at 
Waterloo, would have discovered, if, in that great 
hour, they had been visited with a twinge of neuralgia 
in the head, or a gnawing dyspepsia. 

The influenza, or grippe, as the French call it, is 

C226] 






HARD UP IN PARIS 

not a pleasant thing under any circumstances ; but I 
think of a four days* attack, during which Marie at- 
tended to my wants, as a period of unmixed pleasure. 
She seemed to hover about my sick bed, she moved 
so gently, and her voice (to use the words of my 
former cherished friend, S. T. Coleridge,) was like 

" a hidden brook 



In the leafy month of June, 
That to the sleeping woods all night 
Singeth a quiet tune." 

"Was it that Monsieur would be able to drink a little 
tea, or would it please him to taste some cool lemo- 
nade ?" Helas! Monsieur was too malade for that; 
but the kind attentions of that estimable little woman 
were more refreshing than a Baltic Sea of the 
beverage that cheers but does not inebriate, or all the 
aid that the lemon groves of Italy could afford. Ma- 
rie's politeness was the genuine article, and came 
right from her pure, kind heart. It was as far re- 
moved from that despicable obsequiousness which 
passes current with so many for politeness, as old- 
fashioned Christian charity is from modern philan- 
thropy. 

But— pardon my garrulity— I am forgetting my 
story. In a moment of kindly forgetfulness I lent a 
considerable portion of my available funds to a 
friend who was short, and who was obliged to return 
to America, via England. I was in weekly expecta- 
tion of a draft from home that would place me once 
more upon my financial legs. One, two, three weeks 
passed away, and the letters from America were dis- 
tributed every Tuesday morning, but there was none 

[22711 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

for me. It gave me a kind of faint sensation when 
the clerk at the banker's gave me the disappointing 
answer, and I went into the reading-room of the 
establishment to read the new American papers, and 
to speculate upon the cause of the unremitting neg- 
lect of my friends at home. I shall never forget my 
feelings when, in the third week of my impecuniosity, 
I found my exchequer reduced to the small sum of 
eight francs. I saw the truth of Shakespeare's words 
describing the "consumption of the purse" as an in- 
curable disease. I had many acquaintances and a 
few friends in Paris, but I determined not to borrow 
if it could possibly be avoided. Five days would 
elapse before another American mail arrived, and I 
resolved that my remaining eight francs should carry 
me through to the eventful Tuesday, which I felt 
sure would bring the longed-for succor. I found a 
little dingy shop, in a narrow street behind the 
Church of St. Roch, where I could get a breakfast, 
consisting of a bowl of very good coffee and piece of 
bread (I asked for the end of the loaf) for six sous. 
My dinners I managed to bring down to the sum of 
twelve sous, by choosing obscure localities for the 
obtaining of that repast, and confining myself to 
those simple and nutritious viands which possessed 
the merit attributed to the veal pie by Samuel 
Weller, being "werry fillin' at the price." Some- 
times I went to bed early, to avoid the inconveniences 
of a light dinner. One day I dined with a friend at 
his lodgings, but I did not enjoy his hospitality; I felt 
guilty, as if I had sacrificed friendship to save my 
dwindling purse. The coarsest bread and the most 
suspicious beef of the Latin Quarter would have been 

OS] 



HARD UP IN PARIS 

more delicious to me under such circumstances than 
the best ragout of the Boulevards or the Palais 
Royal. 

Of course, this state of things weighed heavily 
upon my spirits. I heard Marie tell her husband 
that Monsieur F Anglais was bien triste. I avoided 
the friends with whom I had been used to meet, and 
( remembering what a sublime thing it is to suffer and 
be strong) sternly resolved not to borrow till I 
found myself completely gravelled. It grieved me 
to be obliged to pass the old blind man who played 
the flageolet on the Pont des Arts without dropping 
a copper into his tin box; but the severest blow was 
the being compelled to put off my obliging washer- 
woman and her reasonable bill. The time passed 
away quickly, however. The Louvre, with its treas- 
ures of art, was a blessed asylum for me. It cost me 
nothing, and I was there free from the importunities 
of distress which I could not relieve. In the halls of 
the great public library— now the Bibliotheque Im- 
periale—l found myself at home. Among the stu- 
dious throng that occupied its vast reading rooms, I 
was as independent as if my name had been Roth- 
schild, or the treasures of the Bank of France had 
been at my command. The master spirits with 
whom I there communed do not ask what their 
votaries carry in their pockets. There is no prop- 
erty-test for admission to the privileges of their 
companionship. I felt the equality which prevails in 
the republic of letters. I knew that my left hand 
neighbour was not, in that quiet place, superior to 
me on account of his glossy coat and golden-headed 
cane, and that I was no better than the reader at my 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

right hand because he wore a blouse. I jingled my 
two or three remaining francs in my pocket, and 
thought how useless money was, when the lack of it 
was no bar to entrance into the hallowed presence of 

"Those dead but sceptred sovereigns who still rule 
Our spirits from their urns." 

I shall not soon forget the intense satisfaction with 
which I read in the regulations of the library a strict 
prohibition against offering any fees or gratuities 
whatever to its blue-coated officials. 

At last the expected Tuesday morning came. My 
funds had received an unlooked-for diminution by 
receiving a letter from my friend whose wants had 
led me into difficulty. He was just embarking at 
Liverpool— hoped that my remittance had arrived in 
due season— promised to send me a draft as soon as 
he reached New York— envied my happiness at re- 
maining in Paris— and left me to pay the postage on 
his valediction. It would be difficult for any disinter- 
ested person to conceive how dear the thoughtless 
writer of that letter was to me in that unfortunate 
hour. Then, too, I was obliged to lay out six of 
those cherished copper coins for a ride in an omni- 
bus, as I was caught in a shower over in the vicinity 
of St. Sulpice, and could not afford to take the risk of 
a rheumatic attack by getting wet. I well remember 
the cool, business-like air with which that relentless 
conducteur pocketed those specimens of the French 
currency that were so precious in my sight. Yet, in 
spite of these serious and unexpected drains upon my 
finances, I had four sous left after paying for my 
breakfast on that memorable morning. I felt un- 



HARD UP IN PARIS 

commonly cheerful at the prospect of being relieved 
from my troubles, and stopped several minutes after 
finishing my coffee, and conversed with the tidy shop- 
woman with a fluency that astonished both of us. I 
really regretted for the moment that I was so soon 
to be placed in funds, and should no longer enjoy her 
kindly services. I chuckled audibly to myself as I 
pursued my way to the banker's, to think what an 
immense joke it would be for some skilful Charley 
Bates or Artful Dodger to try to pick my pocket just 
then. An ancient heathen expecting an answer from 
the oracle of Delphos, a modern candidate for office 
awaiting the count of the vote, never felt more op- 
pressed with the importance of the result than I did 
when I entered the banking-house. My delight at 
having a letter from America put into my hands 
could only be equalled by my dismay when I opened 
it, and found, instead of the draft, a request from a 
casual acquaintance who had heard that I might 
possibly return home through England, and who, if 
I did, would be under great obligations if I would 
take the trouble to procure and carry home for him 
an English magpie and a genuine King Charles 
spaniel ! 

I did not stop to read the papers that morning. 
As I was leaving the establishment, I met its chief 
partner, to whom I could not help expressing my 
disappointment. He was one of your hard-faced, 
high-cheek-boned Yankees, with a great deal of 
speculation in his eyes. I should as soon have 
thought of attempting the cultivation of figs and 
dates at Franconia as of trying to get a small loan 
from him. So I pushed on into those busy streets 

[>30 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

whose liveliness seemed to mock my pitiable condi- 
tion. I had come to it at last. I had got to borrow. 
A physician, who now stands high among the faculty 
in Boston, was then residing in Paris, and, as I had 
been on familiar terms with him, I determined to 
have recourse to him. He occupied two rooms in 
the fifth story of a house in the Rue St. Honore. His 
apartments were more remarkable for their snugness 
than for the extent of accommodation they afforded. 
A snuff-taking friend once offered to present the doc- 
tor with one of his silk handkerchiefs to carpet that 
parlour with. But the doctor's heart was not to be 
measured by the size of his rooms, and I knew that 
he would be a friend in need. The concierge told 
me that the doctor had not gone out, and, in obe- 
dience to the instructions of that functionary, I 
mounted the long staircase and frapped at the door 
of that estimable disciple of Galen. It wasnot my 
usual thrice-repeated stroke upon the door ; it was a 
timid and uncertain knock— the knock of a borrower. 
The doctor said that he had been rather short him- 
self for a week or two, but that he should undoubt- 
edly find a letter in the General Post that morning 
that would place him in a condition to give me a lift. 
This was said in a manner that put me entirely at my 
ease, and made me feel that by accepting his loan I 
should be conferring an inestimable favour upon 
him. As we walked towards the Rue Jean Jacques 
Rousseau, I amused him with the story of the preced- 
ing week's adventures. He laughed heartily, and 
after a few minutes I joined with him, though I must 
say that the events, as they occurred, did not par- 
ticularly impress me as subjects for very hilarious 



HARD UP IN PARIS 

mirth. The doctor inquired at the poste restante in 
vain. His friends had been as remiss as mine, and 
we had both got to wait another week. The doctor 
was not an habitually profane man, but as we came 
through the court-yard of the post office, he ex- 
pressed his anxiety as to what the devil we should do. 
He examined his purse, and found that his available 
assets amounted to a trifle more than nineteen 
francs. He looked as troubled as he had before 
looked gay. I generously offered him my four re- 
maining coppers, and told him that I would stand by 
him as long as he had a centime in his pocket. Such 
an exhibition of magnanimity could not be made in 
vain. We stopped in front of the church of Our 
Lady of Victories, and took the heroic resolve to 
club our funds and go through the week of expecta- 
tion together. And we did it. I wish that space 
would allow of my describing the achievements of 
that week. Medical books were cast aside for the 
study of domestic economy. I do not believe that a 
similar sum of money ever went so far before, even 
in Paris. We found a place in a narrow street, near 
the Odeon, where fried potatoes were sold very 
cheap; we bought our bread by the loaf, as it was 
cheaper— the loaves being so long that the doctor 
said that he understood, when he first saw them, why 
bread was called the staff of life. We resorted to all 
sorts of expedients to make a franc buy as much as 
possible of the necessaries of life. We frequented 
with great assiduity all places of public amusement 
where there was no fee for admission. The public 
galleries, the^ libraries, the puppet shows in the 
Champs Elysees, were often honoured with our pres- 

n233] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

ence. We made a joke of our necessities, and carried 
it through to the end. The next Tuesday morning 
found us, after breakfasting, on our way to the post 
office, with a franc left in our united treasury. I had 
begun to give up all hopes of our ever getting a letter 
from home, and insisted upon the doctor's trying his 
luck first. He was successful, but the severest part of 
the joke came when he found that his letter (con- 
trary to all precedent) was not postpaid. The polite 
official at the window must have thirty-two sous for 
it, and we had but twenty. Our laughter showed him 
the whole state of the case, and we left him greatly 
amused at our promises to return soon, and get the 
desirable prize. My application at the banker's was 
successful, too, and before noon we were both pre- 
pared to laugh a siege to scorn. I paid the rosy- 
cheeked washerwoman, bought Marie a neat crucifix 
to hang up in the place of a very rude one in her 
conciergerie, out of sheer good humour; and that 
evening the doctor and I laughed over the recollec- 
tions of the week and a good dinner in a quiet restau- 
rant in the Palais Royal. 



C2343 



THE OLD CORNER 

THE human heart loves corners. The very 
word "corner" is suggestive of snugness and 
cosy comfort, and he who has no liking for them is 
something more or less than mortal. I have seen 
people whose ideas of comfort were singularly crude 
and imperfect ; who thought that it consisted in keep- 
ing a habitation painfully clean, and in having every 
book or paper that might give token of the place 
being the dwelling of a human being, carefully out of 
sight. We have great cause for thankfulness that 
such people are not common, (for a little wholesome 
negligence is by no means an unpleasant thing,) so 
that we can say that mankind generally likes to snug- 
gify itself, and is therefore fond of a corner. This 
natural fondness is manifested by the child with his 
playthings and infantile sports, in one of which, at 
least, the attractions of corners for the feline race 
are brought strongly before his inquisitive mind. 
And how is this liking strengthened and built up as 
the child increases in secular knowledge, and learns 
in the course of his poetical and historical researches 
all about the personal history of Master John 
Horner, whose sedentary habits and manducation of 
festive pastry are famous wherever the language of 
Shakespeare and Milton is spoken ! 

This love of nooks and corners is especially ob- 
servable in those who are obliged to live in style and 

n235 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

splendour. Many a noble English family has been 
glad to escape from the bondage of its rank, and has 
found more real comfort in the confinement of a 
Parisian entresol than amid the gloomy grandeur of 
its London home. Those who are condemned to 
dwell in palaces bear witness to this natural love of 
snugness, by choosing some quiet sunny corner in 
their marble halls, and making it as comfortable as if 
it were a cosy cottage. Napoleon and Eugenie de- 
light to escape from the magnificence of the Tuileries 
to that quiet and homelike refuge for people who 
are burdened with imperial dignity, amid the thick 
foliage and green alleys of St. Cloud. Even m that 
mighty maze, the Vatican, the rooms inhabited by 
the Sovereign Pontiff are remarkably comfortable 
and unpalatial, and prove the advantages of small- 
ness and simplicity over gilding and grandeur, for 
the ordinary purposes of life. An American gentle- 
man once called on the great and good Cardinal 
Cheverus, and while talking with him of his old 
friends in America, said that the contrast between 
the Cardinal's position in the episcopal palace of 
Bordeaux and in his former humble residence when 
he was Bishop of Boston, was a very striking one. 
The humble and pious prelate smiled, and taking his 
visitor by the arm, led him from the stately hall in 
which they were conversing, into a narrow room 
furnished in a style of austere simplicity: "The 
palace," said he, "which you have seen and admired 
is the residence of the Cardinal Archbishop of Bor- 
deaux; but this little chamber is where John Cheverus 

lives . 

Literary men and statesmen have always coveted 

t«&1 



THE OLD CORNER 

the repose of a corner where they might be undis- 
turbed by the wranglings of the world. Twicken- 
ham, and Lausanne, and Ferney, and Rydal Mount 
have become as shrines to which the lover of 
books would fain make pilgrimages. Have we not a 
Sunnyside and an Idlewild even in this new land of 
ours ! Cicero, in spite of his high opinion of Marcus 
Tullius, and his thirst for popular applause, often 
grew tired of urban life, and was glad to forsake the 
Senatus populusque Romanus for the quiet of his 
snug villa in a corner of the hill country overlooking 
Frascati. And did not our own Tully love to fling 
aside the burden of his power, and find his Tusculum 
on the old South Shore ? In the Senate Chamber or 
the Department of State you might see the Defender 
of the Constitution, but it was at Marshfield that 
Webster really lived. Horace loved good company 
and the entertainment of his wealthy patrons and 
friends, but he loved snugness and quiet even more. 
In one of his odes he apostrophizes his friend Sep- 
timius, and describes to him the delight he takes in 
the repose of his Tiburtine retreat from the bustle of 
the metropolis, saying that of all places in the world 
that corner is the most smiling and grateful to 
him:— 

Ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes 
Angulus ridet. 

If we look into our hearts, I think we shall most 
of us find that we have a clinging attachment to some 
favourite corner, as well as Mr. Horatius Flaccus. 
There is at least one corner in the city of Boston, 
which has many pleasant associations for the lover 

C2373 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

of literature. Allusion was made a few days since, 
in an evening paper, to the well-known fact that the 
old building at the corner of Washington and School 
Streets was built in 17 13, and is therefore older by 
seventeen years than the Old South Church. That 
little paragraph reminded me of some passages in 
the history of that ancient edifice related to me by an 
ancestor of mine, for whom the place had an almost 
romantic charm. 

The old building (my grandfather used to tell 
me) was originally a dwelling-house. It had the 
high wainscots, the broad staircases, the carved cor- 
nices, and all the other blessed old peculiarities of 
the age in which it was built, which we irreverently 
have improved away. One hundred years ago the 
old corner was considered rather an aristocratic place 
of residence. It was slightly suburban in its position, 
for the town of Boston had an affection for Copp's 
Hill, and the inhabitants clustered about that sacred 
eminence as if the southern parts of their territory 
were a quicksand. Trees were not uncommon in the 
vicinity of the foot of School Street in those days, 
and no innovating Hathorne had disturbed the quiet 
of the place with countless omnibuses. The old cor- 
ner was then occupied by an English gentleman 
named Barmesyde, who gave good dinners, and was 
on intimate terms with the colonial governor. My 
venerated relative, to whom I have already alluded, 
enjoyed his friendship, and in his latter days de- 
lighted to talk of him, and tell his story to those who 
had heard it so often, that Hugh Greville Barme- 
syde, Esquire, seemed like a companion of their own 
young days. 

[238] 



THE OLD CORNER 

Old Barmesyde sprang from an ancient Somerset- 
shire family, from which he inherited a considerable 
property, and a remarkable energy of character. He 
increased his wealth during a residence of many 
years in Antigua, at the close of which he relin- 
quished his business, and returned to England to 
marry a beautiful English lady to whom he had 
engaged himself in the West Indies. He arrived in 
England the day after the funeral of his betrothed, 
who had fallen a victim to intermittent fever. Many 
of his relations had died in his absence, and he found 
himself like a stranger in the very place where he had 
hoped to taste again the joys of home. The death of 
the lady he loved so dearly, and the changes in his 
circle of friends, were so depressing to him, that he 
resolved to return to the West Indies. He thought 
it would be easier for him to continue in the associa- 
tions he had formed there than to recover from the 
shock his visit to England had given him. So he 
took passage in a brig from Bristol to Antigua, and 
said farewell forever, as he supposed, to his native 
land. Before half the voyage was accomplished, the 
vessel was disabled: as Mr. Choate would express it, 
a north-west gale inflicted upon her a serious, an im- 
medicable injury; and she floated a wreck upon the 
foamy and uneven surface of the Atlantic. She was 
fallen in with by another British vessel, bound for 
Boston, which took off her company, and with the 
renewal of the storm she foundered before the eyes 
of those who had so lately risked their lives upon her 
seaworthiness. When Mr. Barmesyde arrived in 
Boston, he found an old friend in the governor of 
the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Governor 

t>39] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

Pownall had but lately received his appointment 
from the Crown, and being a comparative stranger 
in Boston, he was as glad to see Mr. Barmesyde as 
the latter was to see him. It was several months be- 
fore an opportunity to reach the West Indies offered 
itself, and when one did occur, Mr. Barmesyde only 
used it to communicate with his agent at Antigua. 
He had given up all ideas of returning thither, and 
had settled down, with his negro servant Cato, to 
housekeeping at the corner of School Street, within 
a few doors of his gubernatorial friend. 

Governor Pownall's term of office was not a long 
one, but even when he was removed, Mr. Barmesyde 
stuck faithfully to the old corner. He had found 
many warm friends here, and could no longer con- 
sider himself alone in the world. He was a man of 
good natural powers, and of thorough education. He 
was one of those who seem never to lose any thing 
that they have once acquired. In person he was tall 
and comely, and my grandfather said that he some- 
what resembled General Washington as he appeared 
twenty-five years later, excepting that Mr. Barme- 
syde's countenance was more jolly and port-winy. 
From all I can learn, his face, surmounted by that 
carefully-powdered head of hair, must have resem- 
bled a red brick house after a heavy fall of snow. If 
Hugh Barmesyde had a fault, I am afraid it was a 
fondness for good living. He attended to his mar- 
keting in person, assisted by his faithful Cato, who 
was as good a judge in such matters as his master, 
and who used to vindicate the excellence of his mas- 
ter's fare by eating until he was black in the face. 
For years there were few vessels arrived from Eng- 

£240;] 



THE OLD CORNER 

land without bringing choice wines to moisten the 
alimentary canal of Mr. Barmesyde. The Windward 
Isles contributed bountifully to keep alight the festive 
flame that blazed in his cheery countenance, and to 
make his flip and punch the very best that the prov- 
ince could produce. Every Sunday morning Mr. 
Barmesyde's best buckles sparkled in the sunbeams 
as he walked up School Street to the King's Chapel. 
Not that he was an eminently religious man, but he 
regarded religion as an institution that deserved en- 
couragement for the sake of maintaining a proper 
balance in society. The quiet order and dignity of 
public worship pleased him, the liturgy gratified his 
taste, and so Sunday after Sunday his big manly voice 
headed the responses, and told that its possessor had 
done many things that he ought not to have done, 
and had left undone a great many that he ought to 
have done. 

Mr. Barmesyde was not a mere feeder on good 
things, however ; he had a cultivated taste for litera- 
ture, and his invoices of wine were frequently accom- 
panied by parcels of new books. The old gentleman 
took a great delight in the English literature of that 
day. Fielding and Smollett were writing then, and 
no one took a keener pleasure in their novels than he. 
He imported, as he used to boast, the first copy of 
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary that ever came to America, 
and was never tired of reading that stately and 
pathetic preface, or of searching for the touches of 
satire and individual prejudice that abound in that 
entertaining work. His well-worn copy of the Spec- 
tator, in eight duodecimo volumes, presented by him 
to my grandfather, now graces one of my book 

C2413 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

shelves. His books were always at the service of his 
friends, who availed themselves of the old gentle- 
man's kindness to such an extent that his collection 
might have been called a circulating library. But it 
was not merely for the frequent "feast of reason and 
flow of soul" that his friends were indebted to him. 
He was the very incarnation of hospitality. I am 
afraid that my excellent grandparent had an uncom- 
mon admiration for this trait in the old fellow's 
character, for a frequent burning twinge in one of 
the toes of my right foot, and occasionally in the 
knuckles of my left hand, reminds me of his fondness 
for keeping his legs under Mr. Barmesyde's festive 
mahogany. A few years ago, when a new floor was 
laid in the cellar at the old corner, a large number of 
empty bottles was discovered, whose appearance bore 
witness to the previous good character of the place 
as a cellar. Some labels were also found bearing 
dates like 1697, 1708, 1721, &c. To this day the 
occupants of the premises take pleasure in showing 
the dark wine stains on the old stairs leading to the 
cellar. 

But Mr. Barmesyde's happiness, like the gloia de 
profani, which we have all heard the chorus in the 
last scene of Lucrezia Borgia discordantly allude to, 
was but transient. The dispute which had been 
brewing for years between the colonies and the 
mother country, began to grow unpleasantly warm. 
Mr. B. was a stanch loyalist. He allowed that in- 
justice had been done to the colonies, but still he 
could not throw off his allegiance to his most re- 
ligious and gracious king, George III., Defender of 
the Faith. He was ready to do and to suffer as 

C242] 



THE OLD CORNER 

much for his principles as the most ardent of the re- 
volutionists. And he was not alone in his loyalty. 
There were many old-fashioned conservative people 
in this revolutionary and ismatic city in those days as 
well as now. The publication in this city of a trans- 
lation of De Maistre's great defence of the mo- 
narchical principle of government, (the Essay on the 
Generative Principle of Political Constitutions,) and 
of the late Mr. Olivers "Puritan Commonwealth," 
proves that the surrender of Cornwallis and the 
formation of the Federal Constitution did not de- 
stroy the confidence of a good many persons in the 
truth of the principles on which the loyalists took 
their stand. The unfortunate occurrence in State 
Street, March 5, 1770, gave Mr. B. great pain. He 
regretted the bloodshed, but he regretted more 
deeply to see many persons so blinded by their hatred 
of the king's most excellent majesty, as to defend 
and praise the action of a lawless mob just punished 
for their riotous conduct. The throwing overboard 
of the tea excited his indignation. He stigmatized 
it (and not without some reason on his side) as a 
wanton and cowardly act,— a destruction of the 
property of parties against whom the town of Bos- 
ton had no cause of complaint,— a deed which proved 
how little real regard for justice and honour there 
might be among those who were the loudest in their 
shrieks for freedom. Of course he could not give 
utterance to these sentiments without exciting the ire 
of many people ; and feeling that he could no longer 
safely remain in this country, he concluded to return 
to England. In the spring of 1774, Hugh Greville 
Barmesyde gave his last dinner to a few of the faith- 

C243 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

ful at the old corner, and sailed the next day with a 
sorrowing heart and his trusty Cato for the land 
of his birth. He spent the remainder of his days in 
London, where he died in 1795. He was interred 
in the vault belonging to his family, in the north 
transept of the Parish Church of Shepton Mallet, in 
Somersetshire, where there is still a handsome tablet 
commemorating his many virtues and the inconsola- 
ble grief of the nephews and nieces whom his decease 
enriched. 

Some of the less orderly "liberty boys" bore wit- 
ness to the imperfect sympathy that existed between 
them and the late occupant of the old corner, by 
breaking sundry panes of glass in the parlour win- 
dows the night after his departure. The old house, 
during the revolutionary struggle, followed the com- 
mon prosaic course of ordinary occupancy. There 
was "marrying and giving in marriage" under that 
steep and ancient roof in those days, and troops of 
clamorous children used to play upon the broad stone 
steps, and tarnish the brasses that Cato was wont to 
keep so clean and bright. In the latter part of the 
last century the old house underwent a painful trans- 
formation. An enterprising apothecary perverted it 
to the uses of trade, and decorated its new windows 
with the legitimate jars of various coloured fluids. 
It is now nearly half a century since it became a book- 
store. Far be it from me to offer any disturbance to 
the modesty of my excellent friends, Messrs. Tick- 
nor and Fields, by enlarging upon the old corner in 
its present estate. It were useless to write about any 
thing so familiar. They are young men yet, and 
must pardon me if I have used the prerogative of age 

E>443 



THE OLD CORNER 

and spoken too freely about their old establishment 
and its reminiscences. I love the old corner, and 
should not hesitate to apply to it the words of Horace 
which I have quoted above. I love its freedom from 
pretence and ostentation. New books seem more 
grateful to me there than elsewhere ; for the dinginess 
of Paternoster Row harmonizes better with litera- 
ture than the plate glass and gairish glitter of Pic- 
cadilly or Regent Street. 

The large looking-glass which stands near the 
Washington Street entrance to the old corner used 
to adorn the dining-room where Mr. Barmesyde 
gave so many feasts. It is the only relic of that 
worthy gentleman now remaining under that roof. 
If that glass could only publish its reflexions during 
the past century, what an entertaining work on the 
curiosities of literature and of life it might make! 
It is no ordinary place that may boast of having been 
the familiar resort of people like Judge Story, Mr. 
Otis, Channing, Kirkland, Webster, Choate, Everett, 
Charles Kemble and the elder Vandenhoff with their 
gifted daughters, Ellen Tree, the Woods, Finn, 
Dickens, Thackeray, James, Bancroft, Prescott, 
Emerson, Brownson, Dana, Halleck, Bryant, Haw- 
thorne, Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Willis, Bayard 
Taylor, Whipple, Parkman, Hilliard, Sumner, Par- 
sons, Sprague, and so many others whose names will 
live in literature and history. It is a very pleasant 
thing to see literary men at their ease, as they always 
are around those old counters. It is a relief to find 
that they can throw off at times the dignity and re- 
straint of authorship. It is pleasant to see the lec- 
turer and the divine put away their tiresome 

[245] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

earnestness and severe morality, and come down to 
the jest of the day. It refreshes one to know that 
Mr. Emerson is not always orphic, and that the 
severely scholastic Everett can forget his elegant and 
harmonious sentences, and descend to common prose. 
For we can no more bear to think of an orator living 
unceasingly in oratory than we could of Signorina 
Zanfretta being obliged to remain constantly poised 
on the corde tendue. 

The bust of Sir Walter Scott has filled the space 
above the mirror I have spoken of, for many years. 
It is a fine work of Chantrey's, and a good likeness 
of that head of Sir Walter's, so many stories high 
that one can never wonder where all his novels came 
from. Except this specimen of the plastic art, and 
one of Professor Agassiz, there is little that is orna- 
mental in the ancient haunt. The green curtain that 
decorates the western corner of the establishment is 
a comparatively modern institution. It was found 
necessary to fence off that portion of the shop for 
strict business purposes. The profane converse of 
the world cannot penetrate those folds. Into that 
sanctissimum Sanctis simorum no joke, however good, 
may enter. What a strange dispensation of Provi- 
dence is it, that a man should have been for years 
enjoying the good society that abounds at that cor- 
ner, and yet should seem to have so little liking for a 
quiet jest as the estimable person who conceals his 
seriousness behind that green curtain ! 

But every thing must yield to the law of nature, 
and the old corner must share the common lot. Some 
inauspicious night, the fire-alarm will sound for Dis- 
trict III.; hoarse voices will echo at the foot of 

C2463 



THE OLD CORNER 

School Street, calling earnestly on No. 3 to "hold 
on," and No. 9 to "play away"; where erst good 
liquor was wont to abound water will more abound, 
and when the day dawns Mr. Barmesyde's old house 
will be an unsightly ruin,— there will be mourning 
and desolation among the lovers of literature, and 
wailing in the insurance offices in State Street. When 
the blackened ruins are cleared away, boys will pick 
up scraps of scorched manuscripts, and sell them 
piecemeal as parts of the original copy of Hiawatha, 
or Evangeline, or the Scarlet Letter. In the fulness 
of time, a tall, handsome stone or iron building will 
rise on that revered site, and we lovers of the past 
shall try to invest it with something of the unpre- 
tending dignity and genial associations of the present 
venerable pile, which will then be cherished among 
our most precious memories. 



C2473 



SACRED TO THE MEMORY 
OF THEATRE ALLEY 

WE are all associationists. There is no man 
who does not believe in association in some 
degree. For myself, I am firm in the faith. Let me 
not be misunderstood, however ; I do not mean that 
principle of association which the late Mr. Fourier 
advocated in France, and Mr. Brisbane in America. 
I do not believe in the Utopian schemes which have 
been ground out of the brains of philosophers who 
mistake vagueness and impracticability for sub- 
limity, and which they have misnamed association. 
The principle of association to which I pay homage 
is one which finds a home in every human heart. It 
is that principle of our nature which, when the be- 
reaved Queen Constance was mourning for her 
absent child, "stuffed out his vacant garments with 
his form." It is that principle which makes a man 
love the scenes of his boyhood, and which brings 
tears to the eyes of the traveller in a foreign land, 
when he hears a familiar strain from a hand organ, 
however harsh and out of tune. Even the brute 
creation seems to share in it; the cat is sure to be 
found in her favourite place at the fireside, while the 
tea kettle makes music on the hob; the dog, too, (let 
Hercules himself do what he may,) will not only 
have his day, but will have his chosen corner for re- 
pose, and will stick to it, however tempting you may 

C2483 



TO THE MEMORY OF THEATRE ALLEY 

make other places by a superabundance of door mats 
and other canine furniture. And the tired cart horse, 
when his day's labour is over, and he finds himself 
once more in the familiar stall, with his provender 
before him — do you not suppose that the associa- 
tions of equine comfort by which he is surrounded 
are dearer to him than any hopes of the luxury and 
splendour of Her Britannic Majesty's stables at 
Windsor could be? Ask him if he would leave his 
present peck of oats for the chances of royal service, 
and a red-waistcoated, white-top-booted groom to 
wait upon him, and I will warrant you that he will 
answer nay! 

There is no nation nor people that is free from 
this bondage of association. We treasure General 
Jackson's garments with respectful care in a glass 
case in the Patent Office at Washington; in the 
Louvre, you shall find preserved the crown of 
Charlemagne and the old gray coat of the first Na- 
poleon; and at Westminster Abbey, (if you have the 
money to pay your admission fee,) you may see the 
plain old oaken chair in which the crowned monarchs 
of a thousand years have sat. Go to Rome, and 
stand "at the base of Pompey's statua," and associa- 
tion shall carry you back in imagination to the time 
when the mighty Julius fell. Stand upon the grassy 
mounds of Tusculum, and you will find yourself 
glowing with enthusiasm for Cicero, and wonder how 
you could have grown so sleepy over Quousque tan- 
dem,hc, inyour school-boy days. Climb uptheTraste- 
verine steep to where the convent of San Onofrio 
suns itself in the bright blue air of Rome, and while 
the monks are singing the divine office where the 

[249] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

bones of Tasso repose, you may fill your mind with 
memories of the bard of the crusades, in the cham- 
ber where his weary soul found the release it craved. 
Go to that fair capital which seems to have hidden 
itself among the fertile hills of Tuscany; walk 
through its pleasant old streets, and you shall find 
yourself the slave of many pleasing associations. The 
very place where Dante was wont to stand and gaze 
at that wondrous dome which Michel Angelo said 
he was unwilling to copy and unable to excel, is 
marked by an inscription in the pavement. Every 
street has its associations that appeal to your love of 
the beautiful or the heroic. Walk out into the lively 
streets of that city which stands at the head of the 
world's civilization, and you are overwhelmed with 
historic associations. You seem to hear the clatter 
of armed heels in some of those queer old alleys, and 
the vision of Godfrey or St. Louis, armed for the 
holy war, would not astonish you. The dim and 
stately halls of the palaces are eloquent of power, 
and you almost expect to see the thin, pale, thought- 
ful face of the great Richelieu at every corner. Over 
whole districts, rebellion, and anarchy, and infidelity, 
once wrote the history of their sway in blood, and 
even now, the names of the streets, as you read them, 
seem to fill you with terrible mementoes. 

But to us, Americans, connected as we are with 
England in our civilization and our literature, how 
full of thrilling associations is London! From 
Whitehall, where Puritanism damned itself by the 
murder of a king, to Eastcheap, where Mistress 
Quickly served Sir John with his sherris-sack; from 
St. Saviour's Church, where Massinger and Fletcher 

[2503 



TO THE MEMORY OF THEATRE ALLEY 

lie in one grave, to Milton's tomb in St. Giles's, Crip- 
plegate, there is hardly a street, or court, or lane, or 
alley, which does not appeal by some association to 
the student of English history or literature. He 
perambulates the Temple Gardens with Chaucer; he 
hears the partisans of the houses of York and Lan- 
caster, as they profane the silence of that scholastic 
spot; he walks Fleet Street, and disputes in Bolt 
Court with Dr. Johnson; he smokes in the coffee- 
houses of Covent Garden with Dryden and Pope, 
and the wits of their day; he makes morning calls in 
Leicester Square and its neighbourhood, on Sir Philip 
Sidney, Hogarth, Reynolds, and Newton; he buys 
gloves and stockings at Defoe's shop in Cornhill; 
and makes excursions with Dicky Steele out to Ken- 
sington, to see Mr. Addison. Drury Lane, despite 
its gin, and vice, and squalour, has its associations. 
The old theatre is filled with them. They show you, 
in the smoky green-room, the chairs which once were 
occupied by Siddons and Kemble ; the seat of Byron 
by the fireside in the days of his trusteeship; the mir- 
rors in which so many dramatic worthies viewed 
themselves, before they were called to achieve their 
greatest triumphs. 

Every where you find men acknowledging in their 
actions their allegiance to this great natural law. 
Our own city, too, has its associations. Who can 
pass by that venerable building in Union Street, 
which, like a deaf and dumb beggar, wears a tablet 
of its age upon its unsightly front, without recalling 
some of the events that have taken place, some of the 
scenes which that venerable edifice has looked down 
upon, since its solid timbers were jointed in the year 

[251] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

of salvation 1685? Who can enter Faneuil Hall 
without a quickening of his pulse ? Who can walk by 
the old Hancock House, and not look up at it as if 
he expected to see old John (the best writer on the 
subject of American independence) standing at the 
door in his shad-bellied coat, knee-breeches, and pow- 
dered wig? Who can look at the Old South Church 
without thinking of the part it played in the revolu- 
tion, and of the time when it was obliged to yield its 
unwilling horsepitality to the British cavalry? Bos- 
ton is by no means deficient in associations. Go to 
Brattle Street, to Copp's Hill, to Mount Washing- 
ton, to Deer Island,— though it must be acknow- 
ledged, the only association connected with the 
last-named place is the Provident Association. 

If there be a fault in the Yankee character, I fear 
it is a lack of sufficient respect for the memory of the 
past. Nature will have her way with us, however 
we may try to resist her and trample old recollections 
under foot. We worship prosperity too much; and 
the wide, straight streets of western cities, with the 
telegraph posts standing like sentinels on the edge of 
the sidewalks, and a general odour of pork-packing 
and new houses pervading the atmosphere, seem to 
our acquisitive sense more beautiful than the sculp- 
tured arch, the moss-grown tower, the quaint gable, 
and all the summer fragrance of the gardens of the 
Tuileries or the Unterdenlinden. I am afraid that 
we almost deserve to be classed with those who (as 
Mr. Thackeray says) "have no reverence except for 
prosperity, and no eye for any thing but success. " 

Many are kindled into enthusiasm by meditating 
upon the future of this our country, — "the newest born 



TO THE MEMORY OF THEATRE ALLEY 

of nations, the latest hope of mankind,"— but for 
myself I love better to dwell on the sure and unalter- 
able past, than to speculate upon the glories of the 
coming years. While I was young, I liked, when at 
sea, to stand on the top-gallant forecastle, and see 
the proud ship cut her way through the waves that 
playfully covered me with spray; but of late years 
my pleasure has been to lean over the taffrail and 
muse upon the subsiding foam of the vessel's wake. 
The recollection even of storms and dangers is to 
me more grateful than the most joyful anticipation 
of a fair wind and the expected port. With these 
feelings, I cannot help being moved when I see so 
many who try to deaden their natural sensibility to 
old associations. When the old Province House 
passed into the hands of the estimable Mr. Ordway, 
I congratulated him on his success, but I mourned 
over the dark fate of that ancient mansion. I re- 
spected it even in its fallen state as an inn,— for it 
retained much of its old dignity, and the ghosts of 
Andros and his predecessors seemed to brush by you 
in its high wainscoted passages and on its broad stair- 
cases; but it did seem the very ecstasy of sacrilege to 
transform it into a concert-room. I rejoiced, how- 
ever, a few years since, when the birthplace of B. 
Franklin, in Milk Street, was distinguished by an 
inscription to that effect in letters of enduring .stone. 
That was a concession to the historic associations of 
that locality which the most sanguine could hardly 
have expected from the satinetters of Milk Street. 

But I am forgetting my subject, and using up my 
time and ink in the prolegomena. My philosophy of 
association received a severe blow last week. It was 

[>53 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

a pleasant day, and I hobbled out on my gouty tim- 
bers for a walk. I wandered into Franklin Place, 
but it was not the Franklin Place of my youth. The 
rude hand of public improvement had not been kept 
even from that row of houses which, when I was a 
boy, was thought an ornament to our city, and was 
dignified with the name of the Tontine Buildings. 
Franklin Place looked as if two or three of its front 
teeth had been knocked out. I walked on, and my 
sorrow and dismay were increased to find that the 
last vestige of Theatre Alley had disappeared. It 
was bad enough when the old theatre and the resi- 
dence of the Catholic bishops of Boston were swept 
away : I still clung to the old alley, and hoped that it 
would not pass away in my time— that before the old 
locality should be improved into what the profane 
vulgar call sightliness and respectability, I should (to 
use the common expressions of one of our greatest 
orators, who, in almost every speech and oration 
that he has made for some years past, has given a 
sort of obituary notice of himself before closing) 
have been "resting in peace beneath the green sods 
of Mount Auburn," or should have "gone down to 
the silent tomb." 

Do not laugh, beloved reader, at the tenderness of 
my affection for that old place. There is a great 
deal of romance of a quiet and genial kind about 
Theatre Alley. As I first remember it, commerce 
had not encroached upon its precincts; no tall ware- 
houses shut out the light from its narrow footway, 
and its planks were unencumbered by any intrusive 
bales or boxes. Old Dearborn's scale factory was 
the only thing to remind one of traffic in that neigh- 
ed 3 



TO THE MEMORY OF THEATRE ALLEY 

bourhood, which struck a balance with fate by be- 
coming more scaley than before, when Dearborn and 
his factory passed away. The stage door of the the- 
atre was in the alley, and the walk from thence, 
through Devonshire Street, to the Exchange Coffee 
House, which was the great hotel of Boston at that 
time, was once well known to many whose names are 
now part of the history of the drama. How often 
was I repaid for walking through the alley by the 
satisfaction of meeting George Frederick Cooke, the 
elder Kean, Finn, Macready, Booth, Cooper, Incle- 
don, old Mathews, or the tall, dignified Conway— 
or some of that goodly company that made Old 
Drury classical to the play-goers of forty years 
ago. 

The two posts which used to adorn and obstruct 
the entrance to the alley from Franklin Street, when 
they were first placed there, were an occasion of in- 
dignation to a portion of the public, and of anxiety 
and vexation to Mr. Powell, the old manager. That 
estimable gentleman had often been a witness to the 
terror of the children and of those of the weaker sex 
(I hope that I shall be forgiven by the "Rev. An- 
toinette Brown" for using such an adjective) who 
sometimes met a stray horse or cow in the alley; so 
he placed two wooden posts just beyond the theatre, 
to shut out the dreaded bovine intruders. But the 
devout Hibernians who used to worship at the 
church in Franklin Street could not brook the placing 
of any such obstacles in their way to the performance 
of their religious duties; and they used to cut the 
posts down as often as Mr. Powell set them up, 
until he took refuge in the resources of science, and 

C255 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

covered and bound them with the iron bands which 
imprisoned them up to a very recent period. 

Old Mr. Stoughton, the Spanish consul, used to 
occupy the first house in Franklin Street above the 
alley, behind which his garden ran back for some 
distance. How little that worthy gentleman thought 
that his tulip beds and rose bushes would one day 
give place to a dry goods shop! Sefior Stoughton 
was one of the urbanest men that ever touched a hat. 
If he met you in the morning, the memory of his 
bland and gracious salutation never departed from 
you during the day, and seemed to render your sleep 
sweeter at night. He always treated you as if you 
were a prince in disguise, and he were the only per- 
son in the secret of your incognito. He enjoyed the 
intimate friendship of that great and good man, Dr. 
Cheverus, the first Bishop of Boston, who was after- 
wards transferred to the archiepiscopal see of Bor- 
deaux, and decorated with the dignity of a Prince of 
the Church. He, too, often walked through the old 
alley. The children always welcomed his approach. 
They respected Don Stoughton; Bishop Cheverus 
they loved. His very look was a benediction, and 
the mere glance of his eye was a Sursum cor da. That 
calm, wise, benignant face always had a smile for the 
little ones who loved the neighbourhood of that hum- 
ble Cathedral, and the pockets of that benevolent 
prelate never knew a dearth of sugar plums. Years 
after that happy time, a worthy Protestant minister 
of this vicinity— who was blessed with few or none 
of those prejudices against "Romanism" which are 
nowadays considered a necessary part of a minister's 
education,— visited Cardinal Cheverus in his palace 

C256] 



TO THE MEMORY OF THEATRE ALLEY 

at Bordeaux, and found him keenly alive to every 
thing that concerned his old associations and friends 
in Boston. He declared, with tears in his eyes, and 
with that air of sincerity that marked every word he 
spoke, that he would gladly lay down the burden of 
the honour and power that then weighed upon him, 
to return to the care of his little New England flock. 
Now, Cardinal Cheverus was a man of taste and of 
kind feelings, and I will warrant you that when he 
thought of Boston, Theatre Alley was included 
among his associations, and enjoyed a share in his 
affectionate regrets. 

Mrs. Grace Dunlap' s little shop was an institution 
which many considered to be coexistent with the 
alley itself. It was just one of those places that seem 
in perfect harmony with Theatre Alley as it was 
twenty-five years ago. It was one of those shops 
that always seem to shun the madding crowd's ig- 
noble strife, and seek a refuge in some cool seques- 
tered way. The snuff and tobacco which Mrs. 
Dunlap used to dispense were of the best quality, and 
she numbered many distinguished persons among her 
customers. The author of the History of Ferdinand 
and Isabella was often seen there replenishing his 
box, and exchanging kind courtesies with the fair- 
spoken dealer in that fragrant article which is pro- 
ductive of so many bad voices and so much real 
politeness in European society. Mrs. Dunlap her- 
self was a study for an artist. Her pleasant face, her 
fair complexion, her quiet manner, her white cap, 
with its gay ribbons, rivalling her eyes in brightness, 
were all in perfect keeping with the scrupulous neat- 
ness and air of repose that always reigned in her 

C257] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

shop. Her parlour was as comfortable a place as 
you would wish to see on a summer or a winter day. 
It had a cheerful English look that I always loved. 
The plants in the windows, the bird cage, the white 
curtains, the plain furniture, that looked as if you 
might use it without spoiling it, the shining andirons, 
and the blazing wood fire, are all treasured in my 
memory of Theatre Alley as it used to be. Mrs. 
Dunlap's customers and friends (and who could help 
being her friend?) were always welcome in her par- 
lour, and there were few who did not enjoy her sim- 
ple hospitality more than that pretentious kind 
which sought to lure them with the pomp and vanity 
of mirrors and gilding. Her punch was a work of 
art. But I will refrain from pursuing this subject 
further. It is no pleasure to me to harrow up the 
feelings of my readers by dwelling upon the joys of 
their prateritos annos. 

When Mrs. Dunlap moved out of the alley, its 
glory began to decline. From that day its prestige 
seemed to have gone. Even before that time an at- 
tempt had been made to rob it of its honoured name. 
Signs were put up at each end of it bearing the in- 
scription, "Odeon Avenue"; but the attempt was 
vain, whether it proceeded from motives of godli- 
ness or of respectability; nobody ever called it any 
thing but Theatre Alley. At about that time nearly 
all the buildings left in it were devoted to the philan- 
thropic object of the quenching of human thirst. We 
read that St. Paul took courage when he saw three 
taverns. Who can estimate the height of daring to 
which the Apostle of the Gentiles might have risen 
had it been vouchsafed to him to walk through The- 

C258] 



TO THE MEMORY OF THEATRE ALLEY 

atre Alley. One of the most frequented resorts there 
rejoiced in the name of "The Rainbow"— an auspi- 
cious title, certainly, and one which would attract 
those who were averse to the cold water principle. 
Some of the places were below the level of the alley, 
and verified, in a striking manner, the truth of Vir- 
gil's words, Facilis descensus tavernu Among cer- 
tain low persons, not appreciative of its poetic 
associations, the alley at that time was nicknamed 
"Rum Row" ; and he was considered a hero who 
could make all the ports in the passage through, and 
carry his topsails when he reached Franklin Street. 
Various efforts were made at that period to bring the 
alley into disrepute. Among others, a sign was put 
up announcing that it was dangerous passing through 
there; I fear that Father Mathew would have 
thought a declaration that it was dangerous stopping, 
to have been nearer the truth. But the daily deputa- 
tions from the Old Colony and Worcester Railways 
could not be kept back by any signs, and the alley 
echoed to their multitudinous tramp every morning. 
Mr. Choate, too, was faithful to the alley through 
good and evil report, and while there was a plank 
left, it was daily pressed by his India rubbers. To 
such a lover of nature as he, what shall take the place 
of a morning walk through Theatre Alley! 

But venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus, and 
the old alley has been swept away. During the past 
century how many thousands have passed through 
it ! how many anxious minds, engrossed with schemes 
of commercial enterprises, how many hearts weary 
with defeat, how many kind, and generous, and 
great, and good men, who have passed away from 

C259 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

earthly existence, like the alley through which they 
walked! But while I mourn over the loss, I would 
not restore it if I could. When so many of its old 
associations had been blotted out; when low dram- 
drinking dens had taken the place of the ancient, 
quiet dispensatories of good cheer; when grim and 
gloomy warehouses, with their unsocial, distrustful 
iron shutters, had made the warm sunlight a stranger 
to it,— it was time for it to go. It was better that it 
should cease to exist, than continue in its humiliation, 
a reproach to the neighbourhood, and a libel upon 
its ancient and honourable fame. 



C2603 



THE OLD CATHEDRAL 

/ 

IN many people who have been abroad, the mere 
mention of the old city of Rouen is enough to 
kindle an enthusiasm. If you would know why this 
is,— why those who are familiar with the cathedrals 
of Cologne, Milan, Florence, and the basilicas of 
Rome, have yet so deep a feeling about the old capi- 
tal of Normandy,— the true answer is, that Rouen, 
with its Gothic glories and the thrilling history of the 
middle ages written on its every stone, was the first 
ancient city that they saw, and made the deepest im- 
pression on their minds. They had left the stiff 
and unsympathetic respectability of Boston, the tire- 
some cleanliness of Philadelphia, or the ineffable 
filth of New York behind them; or perchance they 
had been emancipated from some dreary western 
town, whose wide, straight, unpaved streets seemed 
to have no beginning and to end nowhere; whose 
atmosphere was pervaded with an odour of fresh 
paint and new shingles, and whose inhabitants would 
regard fifty years as a highly respectable antiquity,— 
and had come steaming across the unquiet Atlantic 
to Havre, eager to see an old city. A short railway 
ride carried them to one in which they could not turn 
a corner without seeing something to remind them 
of what they had seen in pictures or read in books 
about the middle ages. The richly-carved window 
frames, the grotesque faces, the fanciful devices, the 

[2613 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

profusion of ornament, the shrines and statues of 
the saints at the corners of the streets, and all the 
other picturesque peculiarities of that queer old city, 
filled them with wonder and delight. Those fan- 
tastic gables that seemed to be leaning over to look 
at them, inspired them with a respect which all the 
architectural wonders and artistic trophies of the 
continent are powerless to disturb. 

It was not my fortune thus to make acquaintance 
with Rouen. I had several times tasted the pleasure 
of a continental sojourn. The streets of several of 
the great European capitals were as familiar to me 
as those of my native city. Yet Rouen captivated 
me with a charm peculiarly its own. I shall not easily 
forget the delicious summer day in which I left Paris 
for a short visit to Rouen. That four hours' ride 
over the Western Railway of France was full of 
solid enjoyment for every sense. The high cultiva- 
tion of that fertile and unfenced country— the farm- 
ers at work in the sunny broad-stretched fields— the 
hay-makers piling up their fragrant loads— the cha- 
teau-like farm houses, looking as stately as if they 
had strayed out of the city, and, getting lost, had 
thought it beneath their dignity to inquire the way 
back— and those old compactly built towns, in each 
of which the houses seem to have nestled together 
around a moss-grown church tower, like children at 
the knees of a fond mother, — made up a scene which 
harmonized admirably with my feelings and with the 
day, "so calm, so cool, so bright, the bridal of the 
earth and sky." My fellow-passengers shared in 
the general joy which the blithesomeness of nature 
inspired. We all chatted merrily together, and a 

[262] 



THE OLD CATHEDRAL 

German, who looked about as lively as Scott's Com- 
mentaries bound in dark sheep-skin, tried to make a 
joke. So irresistible was the contagion of cheerful- 
ness, that an Englishman, who sat opposite me, so 
far forgot his native dignity, as to volunteer the re- 
mark that it was a "nice day." 

At last we began to consult our watches and time 
tables, and, after a shrill whistle and a ride through 
a long tunnel, I found myself, with a punctuality by 
which you might set your Frodsham, in the station at 
Rouen. I obeyed the instructions of the conductor 
to Messieurs les voyageurs pour Rouen to descendez, 
and was, in a very few minutes, walking leisurely 
through narrow and winding streets, which I used to 
think existed only in the imaginations of novelists 
and scene-painters. I say walking, but the fact is, I 
did not know what means of locomotion I employed 
in my progress through the town. My eyes and 
mind were too busy to take cognizance of any infe- 
rior matters. My astonishment and delight at all 
that met my sight was not so great as my astonish- 
ment and delight to find myself astonished and de- 
lighted. I had seen so many old cities that I had no 
thought of getting enthusiastic about Rouen, until I 
found myself suddenly in a state of mental exalta- 
tion. I had visited Rouen as many people visit 
churches and galleries of art in Italy— because I had 
an opportunity, and feared that in after years I 
might be asked if I had ever been there. But, if a 
dislike to acknowledge my ignorance led me to 
Rouen, it was a very different sentiment that took 
possession of me as soon as I caught the spirit of the 
place. The genius of the past seemed to inhabit 

[263] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

every street and alley of that strange city. I half ex- 
pected, whenever I heard the hoofs of horses, to find 
myself encompassed by mailed knights; and if Joan 
of Arc, with her sweet maidenly face beaming with 
the inspiration of religious patriotism, had galloped 
by, it would not have surprised me so much as it did 
to realize that I— a Yankee, clad in a gray travelling 
suit, with an umbrella in my hand, and drafts to a 
limited amount on Baring Brothers in my pocket- 
was moving about in the midst of such scenes, and 
was not arrested and hustled out of the way as a 
profane intruder. 

Wandering through the mouldy streets without 
any definite idea whither they led, and so charmed 
by all I saw, that I did not care, I suddenly turned a 
corner and suddenly found myself in a market-place 
well filled with figures, which would have graced a 
similar scene in any opera-house, and facing that 
stupendous cathedral which is one of the glories of 
France. I do not know how to talk learnedly about 
architecture; so I can spare you, dear reader, any 
criticism on the details of that great church. I have 
no doubt that it is full of faults, but my unskilful eyes 
rested only on its beauties. I would not have had it 
one stroke of the chisel less ornate, nor one shade 
less dingy. I could not, indeed, help thinking what 
it must have been centuries ago, when it was in all 
the glory of its fresh beauty; but still I rejoiced that 
it was reserved for me to behold it in the perfected 
loveliness and richer glory of its decay. Never until 
then did I fully appreciate the truth of Mr. Ruskin's 
declaration, that the greatest glory of a building is 
not in its sculptures or in its gold, but in its age,— nor 

C2643 



THE OLD CATHEDRAL 

did I ever before perfectly comprehend his eloquent 
words touching that mysterious sympathy which we 
feel in "walls that have long been washed by the 
passing waves of humanity." 

After lingering for a while before the sacred edi- 
fice, I entered, and stood within its northern aisle. 
Arches above arches, supported by a forest of mas- 
sive columns, seemed to be climbing up as if they 
aspired to reach the throne of Him whose worship 
was daily celebrated there. The sun was obscured by 
a passing cloud as I entered, and that made the an- 
cient arches seem doubly solemn. The stillness that 
reigned there was rendered more profound by the 
occasional twitter of a swallow from some "jutty 
frieze," or "coigne of vantage," high up above my 
head. I walked half way up the aisle, and stopped 
on hearing voices at a distance. As I stood listening, 
the sun uncovered his radiant face, and poured his 
golden glory through the great western windows of 
the church, bathing the whole interior with a pris- 
matic brilliancy which made me wonder at my pre- 
sumption in being there. At the same moment a 
clear tenor voice rang out from the choir as if the 
sunbeams had called it into being, giving a wonderful 
expression to the words of the Psalmist, Dominus 
illuminatto mea et salus mea; quern timebo. Then 
came a full burst of music as the choir took up the 
old Gregorian Chant— the universal language of 
prayer and praise. As the mute groves of the Acad- 
emy reecho still the wisdom of the sages, so did that 
ancient church people my mind with forms and scenes 
of an age long passed away. "I was all ear," and 
those solemn strains seemed to be endowed with the 

C2653 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

accumulated melody of the Misereres and Glorias of 
a thousand years. 

I have an especial affection for an old church, and 
I pity with all my heart the man whom the silent 
eloquence of that vast cathedral does not move. The 
very birds that build their nests in its mouldering 
towers have more soul than he. Its every stone is a 
sermon on the transitoriness of human enterprise and 
the vanity of worldly hopes. Beneath its pavement 
lie buried hopes and ambitions which have left no 
memorial but in the unread pages of forgotten his- 
torians. Richard, the lion-hearted, who made two 
continents ring with the fame of his valour, and 
yearned for new conquests, was obliged at last to 
content himself with the dusty dignity and obscurity 
of a vault beneath those lofty arches which stand 
unmoved amid the contentions of rival dynasties and 
the insane violence of republican anarchy. 

But it was not merely to write of the glories of 
Rouen and its churches, that I took up my neglected 
pen. The old cathedral of which I have now a few 
kind words to say, does not, like that of Rouen, date 
back sixteen centuries to its foundation; neither is it 
one of those marvels of architecture in which the con- 
scious stone seems to have grown naturally into 
forms of enduring beauty. No great synods or coun- 
cils have been held within its walls ; nor have its hum- 
ble aisles resounded daily with the divine office 
chanted by a chapter of learned and pious canons. 
Indeed it bears little in its external appearance that 
would raise a suspicion of its being a cathedral at all. 
Yet its plain interior, its simple altars, and its unpre- 
tentious episcopal throne, bear witness to the abiding- 

C2663 



THE OLD CATHEDRAL 

place of that power which is radiated from the shrine 
of the Prince of the Apostles— as unmistakably as if 
it were encrusted with mosaics, and the genius of 
generations of great masters had been taxed in its 
adornment. 

The Cathedral of Boston is the last relic of Frank- 
lin Street as I delight to remember it. One by one, 
the theatre, the residence of the Catholic bishops, 
and the old mansions that bore such a Berkeley 
Square-y look of respectability have passed away; 
and the old church alone remains. Tall warehouses 
look down upon it, as if it were an intruder there, and 
the triumphal car of traffic makes its old walls trem- 
ble and disturbs the devotion of its worshippers. An 
irreverent punster ventured a few months since to 
suggest that, out of regard to its new associations, it 
ought to be rededicated under the invocation of St. 
Casimir, and to be enlarged by the addition of a 
chapel built in honor of St. Pantaleone. 

Quid non mortalia pectora cogis, 
Joci sacra fames ! 

But it is well that it should follow the buildings with 
which it held companionship through so many quiet 
years. The charm of the old street has been de- 
stroyed, and the sooner the last monument of its 
former state is removed the better it will be. The 
land on which it stands formerly belonged to the 
Boston Theatre corporation. It was transferred to 
its present proprietorship in the last week of the last 
century, and the first Catholic church in New Eng- 
land was erected upon it. That church (enlarged 
considerably by the late Bishop Fenwick) is the one 

[267] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

which still stands, and towards which I feel a venera- 
tion similar in kind to that inspired by the cathedrals 
of the old world. Even now I remember with pleas- 
ure how I used to enjoy an occasional visit to that 
strange place in my boyhood. "Logic made easy" 
and "Geometry for Infant Schools" were things un- 
known in my young days. I was weaned from the 
Primer and Spelling-book with the Arabian Nights' 
Entertainments, and the works of Defoe, Goldsmith, 
Addison, and Shakespeare. Therefore the romantic 
instinct was not entirely crushed out of my youthful 
heart, and it would be difficult, dear reader, for you 
to conceive how much I found to feed it on, within 
those plain brick walls. 

The lamp which used to burn constantly before the 
altar, until an anxiety for "improvement" removed it 
out of sight behind the pulpit, filled me with an inde- 
scribable awe. I was ignorant of its meaning, and 
for years was unaware that my childish reverence 
for its mild flicker was a blind homage to one of the 
profoundest mysteries of the Catholic faith. I re- 
member to this day the satisfaction I took in the 
lighting of those tall candles, and what a halo of 
mysterious dignity surrounded even the surpliced 
boys grouped around that altar. That strange cere- 
monial surpassed my comprehension. The Latin, as 
I heard it sung there, was pronounced so differently 
from what I had been taught at school, that it was all 
Greek to me. Yet, when I saw the devotion of that 
congregation, and the pious zeal of the devoted 
clergymen who built that church, I could not call their 
worship "mummery," nor join in the irreverent 
laughter of my comrades at those ancient rites. 

[2683 



THE OLD CATHEDRAL 

There was something about them that seemed to fill 
up my ideal of worship— a soothing and consoling 
influence which I found nowhere else. 

I never entertained the vulgar notion of a Catholic 
priest. Of course my education led me to regard the 
dogmas of the Roman Church with any thing but a 
friendly eye; but my ideas of the clergy of that 
Church were not influenced by popular prejudice. I 
was always willing to believe that Vincent de Paul, 
and Charles Borromeo, and Fenelon were what they 
were, in consequence of their religion, rather than in 
spite of it, as some people, who make pretensions to 
liberality, would fain persuade us. When I recall 
the self-denying lives of the two founders of the 
Catholic Church in Boston,— Matignon and Chev- 
erus,— I wonder that the influence of their virtues 
has not extended even to the present day, to soften 
prejudice and do away with irreligious animosity. 
They were regarded with distrust, if not with hatred, 
when they first came among us to take charge of that 
humble flock; but their devotedness, joined with 
great acquirements and rare personal worth, over- 
came even the force of the great Protestant tradition 
of enmity towards their office. Protestant admira- 
tion kept pace with Catholic love and veneration in 
their regard, and when they built the church which is 
now so near the term of its existence, there were few 
wealthy Protestants in Boston who did not esteem 
it a privilege to aid them with liberal contributions. 
The first subscription paper for its erection was 
headed by the illustrious and venerable name of John 
Adams, the successor of Washington in the presi- 
dency of the United States. 

C2693 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

The memory of the first Bishop of Boston, Dr. 
Cheverus, is (for most Bostonians of my age) the 
most precious association connected with the Cathe- 
dral. He was endeared to the people of this city by 
ten years of unselfish exertion in the duties of a mis- 
sionary priest, before he was elevated to the dignity 
of the episcopate. His unwillingness to receive the 
proffered mitre was as characteristic of his modest 
and humble spirit, as the meekness with which he 
bore his faculties when the burden of that respon- 
sibility was forced upon him. His "episcopal 
palace," as he used facetiously to term his small and 
scantily-furnished dwelling, which was contiguous to 
the rear of the church, was the resort of all classes of 
the community. His simplicity of manner and in- 
genuous affability won all hearts. The needy and 
opulent, the learned and illiterate, the prosperous 
merchant and the Indians in the unknown wilds of 
Maine, found in him a father and a friend. Chil- 
dren used to run after him as he walked down Frank- 
lin Place, delighted to receive a smile and a kind 
word from one whose personal presence was like a 
benediction. 

His face was the index of a pure heart and a great 
mind. It was impossible to look at him without re- 
calling that fine stanza of the old poet.— 

"A sweete attractive kind of grace, 
A full assurance given by lookes, 
Continuall comfort in a face, 
The lineaments of Gospel bookes ; — 
I trow that countenance cannot lie 
Whose thoughts are legible in the eye." 

[>7o3 



THE OLD CATHEDRAL 

One of the ancient Hebrew prophets, in describ- 
ing the glories of the millennial period, tells us that 
upon the bells of the horses shall be the words, Holi- 
ness unto the Lord— a prophecy which always re- 
minded me of Cheverus; for that divine inscription 
seemed to have been written all over his benign 
countenance as with the luminous pen of the rapt 
evangelist in Patmos. 

But Bishop Cheverus was not merely a good man 
—he was a great man. He did not court the society 
of the learned, for his line of duty lay among the 
poor; but, even in that humble sphere, his talents 
shone out brightly, and won the respect even of 
those who had the least sympathy with the Church to 
which his every energy was devoted. Boston valued 
him highly; but few of her citizens thought, as they 
saw him bound on some errand of mercy through her 
streets, that France envied them the possession of 
such a prelate, that the peerage of the old monarchy 
was thought to need his virtuous presence, and that 
the scarlet dignity of a Prince of the Church was in 
reserve for that meek and self-sacrificing servant of 
the poor. Had he been gifted with prophetic vision, 
his humility would have had much to suffer, and his 
life would have been made unhappy, by the thought 
of coming power and honour. He had given the best 
part of his life to Boston, and here he wished to die. 
He had buried his friend and fellow-labourer, Dr. 
Matignon, in the Church of St. Augustine at South 
Boston, and when he placed the mural tablet over the 
tomb of that venerable priest, he left a space for his 
own name, and expressed the hope that, as they had 

C27O 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

lived together harmoniously for so many years, they 
might not in death be separated. It was a strange 
sight to see more than two hundred Protestants 
remonstrating against the translation of a Catholic 
bishop from their city, and speaking of him in such 
terms as these: "We hold him to be a blessing and a 
treasure in our social community, which we cannot 
part with, and which, without injustice to any man, 
we may affirm, if withdrawn from us, can never be 
replaced." And when he distributed all that he pos- 
sessed among his clergy, his personal friends and the 
poor, and left Boston as poor as he had entered it, 
with the single trunk that contained his clothes when 
he arrived, twenty-seven years before,— public ad- 
miration outran the power of language. Doctrinal 
differences were forgotten. Three hundred car- 
riages and other vehicles escorted him several miles 
on the road to New York, where he was to embark. 
Of his life as Bishop of Montauban, Archbishop 
of Bordeaux, a Peer of France, and a Cardinal, there 
is not space for me to speak. Suffice it to say, that 
amid all the dignities to which he was successively 
promoted, he lived as simply and unostentatiously as 
when he dwelt in Franklin Street; and that in time 
of pestilence and public distress he showed the same 
unbounded charity which caused his departure from 
Boston to be considered a public calamity. To the 
last day of his life he maintained his interest in his 
American home, and would gladly have relinquished 
all his dignities to return and minister at the altar of 
the church he here erected. Throughout France he 
was honoured and beloved, even as he had been in 
the metropolis of New England, and a nation sor- 

1:272] 



THE OLD CATHEDRAL 

rowed at his death. Full as his life was of good 
works, it was not in his eloquence, nor his learning, 
nor in the pious and charitable enterprises which he 
originated, that the glory of Cardinal Cheverus con- 
sisted; it was in the simplicity of his character and 
the daily beauty of his life :— 

" His thoughts were as a pyramid up-piled, 
On whose far top an angel stood and smiled, 
Yet in his heart he was a little child." 

The gentle and benevolent spirit of that illustrious 
prelate has never departed from the church he built. 
When Channing died, and was buried from the 
church which his eloquence had made famous, the 
successor of Cheverus caused the bell of the neigh- 
bouring Cathedral to be tolled, that it might not 
seem as if the Catholics had forgotten the friendly 
relations which had existed between the great Uni- 
tarian preacher and their first bishop. And when 
the good Bishop Fenwick was borne from the old 
Cathedral, with all the pomp of pontifical obsequies, 
his courtesy and regard for Dr. Channing's memory 
was not forgotten, and the bell which was so lately 
removed from the tower, where it had swung for 
half a century, joined with that of the Cathedral in 
giving expression to the general sorrow, and proved 
that no dogmatic differences had disturbed the 
kindly spirit which Channing inculcated and had ex- 
emplified in his blameless life. 

Of the later history of the Cathedral of the Holy 
Cross I may not speak. My youthful respect for it 
has in no degree diminished, and I shall always con- 
sider it a substantial refutation of the old apothegm, 

C ml 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

"Familiarity breeds contempt." There are, I doubt 
not, those who regard that old edifice with deeper 
feelings than mine. Who can estimate the affection 
and veneration in which it is held by those who may 
there have found an asylum from harassing doubts, 
who have received from that font the joy of a reno- 
vated heart, and from that altar the divine gift which 
is at the same time a consolation for past sorrows 
and a renewal of strength to tread the rough path of 
life! 

I am told that it will not probably be long before 
the glittering cross which the pure-hearted Cheverus 
placed upon the old church will be removed, and the 
demolition of his only monument in Boston will be 
effected. Permit me to conclude these reminiscences 
with the expression of the hope that the new Cathe- 
dral of Boston will be an edifice worthy of this 
wealthy city, and that it may contain some fitting 
memorial of the remarkable man who exercised his 
beneficent apostolate among us during more than a 
quarter of a century. The virtues which merited the 
gratitude of the poor and the highest honours which 
pontiffs and kings can bestow, ought not to go uncom- 
memorated in the city which witnessed their develop- 
ment, and never hesitated to give expression to its 
love and veneration for their possessor. But what- 
ever the new Cathedral may be,— however glorious 
the skill of the architect, the sculptor, and the painter 
may render it,— there are those in whose affections it 
will never be able to replace the little unpretending 
church which Cheverus built, and which the remem- 
brance of his saintly life has embalmed in all their 
hearts. 

C2743 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
SUFFERING 



I am old, 
And my infirmities have chained me here 
To suffer and to vex my weary soul 
With the vain hope of cure.* * * 
Yet my captivity is not so joyless 
As you would think, my masters. Here I sit 
And look upon this eager, anxious world, — 
Not with the eyes of sour misanthropy, 
Nor envious of its pleasures, — but content, — 
Yea, blessedly content, 'mid all my pains, 
That I no more may mingle with its brawlings. 

HUMAN suffering is an old and favourite 
theme. From the time when the woes of Job 
assumed an epic grandeur of form, and the adven- 
tures and pains of Philoctetes inspired the tragic 
muse of Sophocles, down to the publication of the 
last number of the London Lancet, there would seem 
to have been no subject so attractive as the sufferings 
of poor humanity. Literature is filled with their 
recital, and, if books were gifted with a vocal power, 
every library would resound with wailings. Ask 
your neighbour Jenkins, who overtakes you on your 
way to your office, how he is, and it is ten chances to 
one that he will entertain you with an account of his 
influenza or his rheumatism. It is a subject, too, 
which age cannot wither nor custom stale. It knows 
none of the changes which will at times dwarf or 

£275 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

keep out of sight all other themes. The weather, 
which forms the raw material of so much conversa- 
tion, is nothing compared to it. There is nothing 
which men find so much pleasure in talking about as 
their own ailments. The late Mr. Webster, of 
Marshfield, was once stopping for a single day in a 
western city, where he had never been before, and 
where there was a natural curiosity among many of 
the inhabitants to see the Defender of the Constitu- 
tion. He therefore set apart two hours before the 
time of his departure for the reception of such per- 
sons as might seek the honour of a shake of his 
hand. The reception took place in one of the par- 
lours of a hotel, the crowd filing in at one door, being 
introduced by the mayor, and making their exit by 
another. In the course of the proceedings, a little 
man, with a lustrous beaver in one hand and a gold- 
headed cane in the other, and whose personal ap- 
parel appeared to have been got up (as old Pelby 
would have said) without the slightest regard to ex- 
pense, and on a scale of unparalleled splendour, 
walked forward, and was presented by the mayor as 
"Mr. Smith, one of our most eminent steamboat 
builders and leading citizens." Mr. Webster's large, 
thoughtful, serene eyes seemed to be completely 
filled by the result of the combined efforts of the 
linen-draper, the tailor, and the jeweller, that con- 
fronted him, and his deep voice made answer— "Mr. 
Smith, I am happy to see you. I hope you are well, 
sir." "Thank you, thir," said the leading citizen, "I 
am not very well. I wath tho unfortunate ath to 
take cold yethterday by thitting in a draught. Very 
unpleathant, Mr. Webthter, to have a cold! But 

0763 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUFFERING 

Mrs. Smith thays that the thinks that if I put my 
feet in thome warm water to-night, and take thome- 
thing warm to drink on going to bed, that I may get 
over it. I thertainly hope tho, for it really givth me 
the headache, and I can't thmell at all." Mr. Web- 
ster expressed a warm interest in Mr. Smith's case, 
and a hope that Mrs. Smith's simple medical treat- 
ment would result beneficially, and then turned with 
undisturbed gravity to the next citizen, who, with 
some six hundred others, was anxiously waiting his 
turn. We are all like Mr. Smith. We laugh, it is 
true, at his affectations, but we are as likely to force 
our petty ailments upon a mind burdened with the 
welfare of a nation; and we never tire of hearing 
ourselves talk about our varying symptoms. Polite- 
ness may hold us back from importuning our friends 
with the diagnosis of our case, but our self-centred 
hearts are all alike, and a cold in the head will 
awaken more feelings in its victim than the recital of 
all the horrors of the hospital of Scutari. Nothing 
can equal the heroic fortitude with which we bear 
the sufferings of our fellows, or the saintliness of our 
pious resignation and acquiescence in the wisdom of 
the divine decrees when our friends are bending un- 
der their afflictive stroke. 

I wish to say a few words about suffering. Do not 
be afraid, beloved reader, that I am going to carry 
you into rooms from which the light is excluded, and 
which are strangers to any sound above a whisper, 
or the casual movement of some of the phials on the 
mantel-piece. I am going to speak of suffering in its 
strict sense of pain,— bodily pain,— and sickness is 
not necessarily accompanied with pain. I cannot re- 

I>77 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

gard your sick man as a real sufferer. His fever 
rages, and he tosses from side to side as if he were 
suffering punishment with Dives ; but from the inco- 
herent phrases which escape from his parched lips, 
you learn that his other self is rapt in the blissfulness 
that enfolds Lazarus. He prattles childishly of 
other lands and scenes— he thinks himself surrounded 
by friends whose faces once were grateful to his 
sight, but who long since fell before the power with 
which he is struggling— or he fancies himself meta- 
morphosed into a favourite character in some pleas- 
ant book which he has lately read. After a time he 
wakes forth from his delirium, but he cannot even 
then be called a sufferer. On the contrary, his situa- 
tion, even while he is so entirely dependent upon 
those around him, is really the most independent one 
in the world. His lightest wish is cared for as if his 
life were the price of its non-accomplishment. All 
his friends and kinsmen, and neighbours whom he 
hardly knows by sight, vie with each other in trying 
to keep pace with his returning appetite. He is the 
absolute monarch of all he surveys. There is no one 
to dispute his reign. The crown of convalescence is 
the only one which does not make the head that 
wears it uneasy. He has nothing to do but to satisfy 
his longings for niceties, to listen to kind words from 
dear friends, to sleep when he feels like it, and to 
get better. I am afraid that we are all so selfish and 
so enslaved by our appetites, that the period of con- 
valescence is the pleasantest part of life to most 
of us. 

Therefore I shut out common sickness, fevers, and 
the like, from any share in my observations on suffer- 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUFFERING 

ing. If you ask me what I should be willing to con- 
sider real bodily pain,— since I am unwilling to allow 
that ordinary sick men participate in it,— I should 
say that you can find it in a good, old-fashioned at- 
tack of rheumatism or gout. I think it was Horace 
Walpole who said that these two complaints were 
very much alike, the difference between them being 
this : that rheumatism was like putting your hand or 
foot into a vice, and screwing it up as tight as you 
possibly can, and gout was the same thing, only you 
give the screw one more turn. It is no flattery to 
speak of the victim to either of these disorders as a 
sufferer. The rheumatic gout is a complaint which 
possesses all the advantages and peculiarities which 
its compound title denotes. It unites in itself all the 
potentiality of gout and all the ubiquity of rheu- 
matism. Its characteristics have been impressed 
upon me in a manner that sets at defiance that weak- 
ness of memory which generally accompanies old 
age. Sharp experience, increasing in sharpness as 
my years pile up, makes that complaint a specialty 
among my acquirements. These stinging, burning, 
cutting pains deserve the superlative case, if any 
thing does. Language (that habitual bankrupt) is 
reduced to a most abject state when called upon to 
describe rheumatic gout. The disease does not seem 
to feel satisfied with poisoning your blood by its 
aciduousness, it makes your flesh tingle and burn, 
and, like the late Duke of Wellington, does not rest 
until it has conquered the bony part. The very bone 
seems to be crumbling wherever the demon of gout 
pinches. There are moments in the life of every 
gouty man when it seems as if nothing would be so re- 

1:2793 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

freshing as to indulge for a while in the use of that 
energetic diction, savouring more of strength than 
of righteousness, which is common among cavalry 
troops and gentlemen of the seafaring profession, 
but which, in society, is considered to be a little in 
advance of the prejudices of the age. No higher 
encomium could be passed upon a gouty man than to 
say that, with all his torments, he never swore, and 
was seldom petulant. But there are very few whose 
merits deserve this canonization. 

But gout, with all its pains, has yet its redeeming 
characteristics. That great law of compensation 
which reduces the inequalities of our lot, and makes 
Brown, Jones, and Robinson come out about even in 
the long run, is not inoperative here. The gout is 
painful, but its respectability is unquestionable. It is 
the disease of a gentleman. It is a certificate of good 
birth more satisfactory than any which the Heralds' 
College or the Genealogical Association can furnish. 
It is but right, too, that the man who can date back 
his family history to Plymouth or Jamestown in this 
country, and to Runnymede on the other side of the 
Atlantic, should pay something for such a privilege. 
A man may never have indulged in "the sweet poison 
of the Tuscan grape" himself, but can he reasonably 
complain of an incontrovertible testimony to the fact 
that his ancestors lived well! Chacun a son gout: 
for myself, I should much prefer my honoured fam- 
ily name, with all its associations with the brave 
knight who made it famous, accompanied by the only 
possession which I have received by hereditary right, 
to the most unequivocal state of health burdened 
with such a name as Jinkins. 

C280] 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUFFERING 

Mentally and spiritually, the gout is far from 
being a useless institution. It ripens a man's judg- 
ment, and prunes away the radical tendencies of his 
nature. It will convert the wildest of revolutionists 
into the stiffest of conservatives. It teaches a man 
to look at things as they really are, and not as enthu- 
siasm would have them represented. No gouty man 
would ever look to the New York Tribune as the 
exponent of his religious or political creed. His 
complaint has a positive character, and it makes him 
earnest to find something positive in religion and 
politics. The negativeness of radicalism tires him. 
He deprecates every thing like change. He thinks 
that religion, and society, and government were es- 
tablished for some better end than to afford a per- 
petual employment to the destructive powers of 
visionary reformers and professional philanthro- 
pists. He longs to find constancy and stability in 
something besides his inexorable disorder. 

There is another disorder which people generally 
seem to consider a very trifling affair, but which any 
one who knows it will allow to be productive of the 
most unmistakable pain. I refer to neuralgia. Who 
pities a neuralgic person? Any healthy man, when 
asked about it, will answer in his ignorance that it is 
"only a headache." But ask the school teacher, 
whose throbbing head seems to be beating time to 
the ceaseless muttering and whispering of her schol- 
ars as they bend over their tasks— ask the student, 
whose thoughts, like undisciplined soldiers, will not 
fall into the ranks, and whose head seems to be oc- 
cupied by a steam engine of enormous power, run- 
ning at the highest rate of pressure, with the driver 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

sitting on the safety-valve— ask them whether neu- 
ralgia is "only a headache" ! Who can tell the 
cause of the prevalence of this scourge? whether it 
proceeds from our houses overheated with intolera- 
ble furnaces and anthracite coal, or from our treach- 
erous and unconstant climate so forcibly described by 
Choate: "Cold to-day; hot to-morrow; mercury at 
eighty degrees in the morning, with wind at south- 
west ; and in three hours more a sea turn, with wind 
at east, a thick fog from the very bottom of the 
ocean, and a fall of forty degrees of Fahrenheit." 
The uncertainty which seems to attend all human 
science, and the science of medicine in particular, en- 
velops this mysterious disease, and thousands of us 
are left to suffer and wonder what the matter is. 

But all of these pains, gouty, neuralgic, and 
otherwise, have yet their sweet uses, and like the vile 
reptile Shakespeare tells us of, are adorned with a 
precious jewel. The old Roman emperors in the 
hour of triumph used to have a slave stand behind 
them to whisper in their ear, from time to time, the 
unwelcome but salutary truth that they were but 
mortal men. Even now, on the occasion of the en- 
thronement of a Pope, a lighted candle is applied to 
a bunch of flax fixed upon a staff, and as the smoke 
dissipates itself into thin air before the newly- 
crowned Pontiff, surrounded as he is by all the em- 
blems of religion and all the insignia and pomp of 
worldly power, the same great truth of the perish- 
ableness of all mortal things is impressed upon his 
mind by the chanting of the simple but eloquent 
phrase, Sic transit gloria mundi. But we neuralgic 
and gouty wretches need no whispering slave nor 

C2823 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUFFERING 

smoking flax to remind us of our frailty and the 
transientness of our happiness and glory. We carry 
with us a monitor who checks our swelling pride, and 
teaches us effectually the brevity of human joys. We 
are very apt, in our impatience and short-sightedness, 
to think that if we had the management of the world 
and the dispensation of pleasure and suffering, every 
thing could be conducted in a much more satisfactory 
manner. If it were so, we should undoubtedly carry 
things on in the style of a French restaurant, so that 
we could have pain a discretion. But on the whole, 
I am inclined to think that we had better leave these 
matters to the management of that infinite Power 
which gives us day by day our daily pain, and from 
which we receive in the long run about what is meet 
for us. I hope that I shall not be thought ill-bred or 
profane in using such expressions as these. At my 
time of life it is too late to begin to murmur. A few 
twinges more or less are nothing when the hair 
grows gray and the eye is dimmed with the mists of 
age. The man who knows nothing of the novitiate 
of patience— who has passed through life without 
the chastening discipline of bodily pain— has missed 
one of the best parts of existence. To suffer is one 
of the noblest prerogatives of human nature. With- 
out suffering, life would be robbed of half its zest, 
and the thought of death would drive us to despair. 

When I was a young man, and gave little thought 
to the gout and the other ills that vex me at present, 
I saw a wonderful exhibition of patience, which I 
now daily recall to mind, and wish I could imitate. 
I was sojourning in Florence, that lovely city, whose 
every association is one of calm and satisfactory 

C2833 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

pleasure undisturbed by any thing like bodily suffer- 
ing. I enjoyed the friendship of a young American 
amateur artist of unquestioned talent, but whose 
artistic efforts were interfered with by the frequent 
attacks of a serious and excruciating disorder. It 
was considerable time after I made his acquaintance 
before I knew that he was an invalid. I noticed his 
lameness, but whenever we met he wore a smiling 
face, and had a cheerful word for every body. One 
evening I called in at his quiet lodgings near the 
Lung' Arno, arid found a party of some six or eight 
Americans talking over their recollections of home. 
He was entertaining them with the explanation of an 
imaginary panorama of New England, and a musical 
friend threw in illustrative passages from the piano 
in the intervals. The parlour resounded with our 
laughter at his irresistible fun ; but in the midst of it 
all, he asked us to excuse him for a moment, and 
went into his bed-room. After a little while, another 
engagement calling me away, I went into his chamber 
to speak with him before leaving. I found him lying 
upon his bed, writhing like Laocoon, while great 
drops stood upon his brow and agony was depicted 
on his patient face. He resisted all my attempts to 
do any thing for him ; the attack had lasted all day, 
but was at some times severer than at others; he 
should feel better soon, and would go back to his 
friends ; I had better not stop with him, as it might 
attract their attention in the parlour, &c. So I took 
my leave. The next morning I met one of his 
friends, who told me that he returned to his com- 
pany a few minutes after my departure, and enter- 
tained them for an hour or more with an exhibition 

C2843 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUFFERING 

of his powers of wit and humour, which eclipsed 
all his previous efforts. Poor 3. C! His weary- 
but uncomplaining spirit laid down that crippled 
body, which never gave aught but pain to its posses- 
sor, three or four years ago, and passed, let us hope, 
into a happier state of existence, which flesh and 
blood, with their countless maladies and dolours, 
may not inherit. 

The traveller in the south of Europe frequently 
encounters, in his perambulations through the streets 
and squares of cities, a group of people gathered 
around a monk, who is discoursing to them of those, 
sublime truths which men are prone to lose sight of 
in their walks abroad. The style of the sermon is 
not, it is true, what we should look for from New- 
man, or Ravignan, or Ventura, but it has in it those 
fundamental principles of true eloquence, simplicity 
and earnestness; and the coarse brown habit, the 
knotted cord, and the pale, serene, devout face of 
the preacher, harmonize wondrously with the self- 
denying doctrine he teaches, and give a double force 
to all his words. His instructions frequently concern 
the simple moral duties of life and the exercise of the 
cardinal virtues, which he enforces by illustrations 
drawn from the lives of canonized saints, who won 
their heavenly crown and their earthly fame of 
blessedness by the practice of those virtues. Allow 
me to close my sermon on suffering in the manner of 
the preaching friars, though I may not draw my 
illustrations from the ancient martyrologies; for I 
apprehend that it will be more in keeping with the 
serious character of this essay to take them from an- 
other source. We have all laughed at Dickens's 

C2853 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

characters of Mark Tapley and Mr. Toots. The 
former was celebrated for "keeping jolly under dis- 
advantageous circumstances," and seemed to mourn 
over those dispensations of good fortune which de- 
tracted from his credit in being jolly. The latter was 
never known to indulge in any complaint, but met 
every mishap and disappointment with a manly resig- 
nation and the simple remark, "It's of no conse- 
quence." Even when he was completely ingulfed in 
misfortunes, when Pelion seemed to have been 
heaped upon Ossa, and both upon him, he did not 
give way to despair. He only gave utterance more 
fervently to his favourite maxim, "It's of no conse- 
quence. Nothing is of any consequence whatever!" 
Now, laugh at it as we may, this is a great truth. It 
is the foundation of all true philosophy— of all prac- 
tical religion. A few years more, and what will it 
avail us to have bargained successfully, to have lived 
in splendour, to have left in history a name that shall 
be the synonyme of power! A few years, and what 
shall we care for all our present sufferings and the 
light afflictions which are but for a moment! May 
we not say with Solomon, that "All is vanity," and 
with poor Toots, that "Nothing is of any conse- 
quence whatever"? Now, if there are any people 
who are likely to arrive at this satisfactory conclu- 
sion, and who need the consolation imparted by the 
reception and full appreciation of the deep truth it 
contains, it is the gouty, and rheumatic, and neuralgic 
wretches whom I have had in mind while writing this 
paper. Let me, in conclusion, as one who has had 
some experience, and is not merely theorizing, ex- 
hort all such persons to meditate upon the lives of 

C2863 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUFFERING 

the two great patterns of patience whom I have 
brought forward as examples; and to bear in mind 
that it is only through the resignation of Toots, that 
they can attain to the jollity of Tapley. Likewise let 
me counsel those who may be passing through life 
unharmed by serious misfortune and untrammelled 
by bodily pain, never to lose sight of that striking 
admonition of old Sir Thomas Browne's, "Measure 
not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by the extent 
of thy grave ; and reckon thyself above the earth, by 
the line thou must be contented with under it." 



C2873 



BOYHOOD AND BOYS 

HUMAN nature is a very telescopic "institu- 
tion." It delights to dwell on whatever is 
most distant. Lord Rosse's famous instrument 
dwindles down to a mere opera glass if you compare 
it with the mental vision of a restless boy, looking 
forward to the time when he shall don a tail-coat and 
a beaver hat. How his young heart swells with 
pride as he anticipates the day when he shall be his 
own master, as the phrase is— when he shall be able 
to stay out after nine o'clock in the evening, and to 
go home without being subjected to the ignominy of 
being escorted by a chambermaid! If he be of a 
particularly sanguine temperament, his wild imagina- 
tion is rapt in the contemplation of the possibility of 
one day having his name in the newspapers as secre- 
tary of some public meeting, or as having made a 
vigorous speech at a political caucus where liberty of 
speech runs out into slander, and sedition is mistaken 
for patriotism,— or perhaps even of being one day a 
Common Councilman, or a member of the Great and 
General Court. A popular poet of the present day 
has expressed the same idea in a less prosaic man- 
ner:— 

"Not rainbow pinions coloured like yon cloud, 
The sun's broad banner o'er his western tent, 
Can match the bright imaginings of a child 
Upon the glories of his coming years:"— 

H2883 



BOYHOOD AND BOYS 

and another bard avers that human blessings are 
always governing the future, and never the present 
tense,— or something to that effect. The truth of 
this nobody will deny who has passed from the boxes 
of childhood upon the stage of manhood which so 
charmed his youthful fancy, and finds that the heroes 
who dazzled him once by their splendid achieve- 
ments are mere ordinary mortals like himself, whom 
the blindness or caprice of their fellows has allowed 
to be dressed in a little brief authority; that the 
cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces he used to 
gaze on from afar, prove, on a closer inspection, to 
be mere deceptions of paint and canvas, and that he 
has only to look behind them to see the rough bricks 
and mortar of every-day life. 

The voyager who sails from the dark waters of 
the restless Atlantic into the deep blue Mediterra- 
nean, notices at sunset a rich purple haze which rises 
apparently from the surface of that fair inland sea, 
and drapes the hills and vales along the beautiful 
shore with a glory that fills the heart of the beholder 
with unutterable gladness. The distant, snow-cov- 
ered peaks of old Granada, clad in the same bright 
robe, seem by their regal presence to impose silence 
on those whom their majestic beauty has blessed 
with a momentary poetic inspiration which defies all 
power of tongue or pen. It touches nothing which it 
does not adorn, and the commonest objects are trans- 
muted by its magic into fairy shapes which abide ever 
after in the memory. Under its softening influence, 
the dingy sail of a fisherman's boat becomes almost 
as beautiful an object to the sight as the ruins of the 
temple which crowns the height of Cape Colonna. 

C2893 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

But when you approach nearer to that which had 
seemed so charming in its twilight robes, your poetic 
sense is somewhat interfered with. You find the 
fishing boat as unattractive as any that anchor on the 
Banks from which we obtain such frequent discounts 
of nasty weather, and the shore, though it may still 
be very beautiful, lacks the supernal glory imparted 
to it by distance. It is very much after this fashion 
with manhood, when we compare its reality with our 
childish expectations. We find that we have been 
deceived by a mere atmospheric phenomenon. But 
the destruction of the charm which age had for our 
eyes as children, is compensated for by the creation 
of a new glory which lights up our young days, as we 
look back upon them with the regret of manhood, 
and realize that their joys can never be lived over 
again. 

Pardon me, gentle reader, for all this prosing. I 
have been reading that pleasant, hearty book, "Tom 
Brown's School Days at Rugby," during the past 
week, and it has set me a-thinking about my own boy- 
hood; for, strange as it may seem, there was a time 
when this troublesome foot was more familiar with 
the football and the skate than with gout and flannel, 
— and Tom Brown's genial reminiscences have re- 
vived the memory of that time most wonderfully, 
There was considerable fun in Boston in my child, 
hood, even though most of the faces which one met 
in Marlboro' Street and Cornhill were such as might 
have appropriately surrounded Cromwell at Naseby 
or Marston Moor. There were many people, even 
then, who did not regard religion as an affair of 
spasmodic emotions, and long, bilious-looking faces, 

[290] 



BOYHOOD AND BOYS 

and psalm-singing, and neck-ties. They thought 
that, so long as they were honest in their dealings, 
and did not swear to false invoices at the custom- 
house, and did as they would be done by, and lived 
virtuously, that He to whom they had been taught by 
parental lips to pray, would overlook the smaller 
offences— such as an occasional laugh or a pleasant 
jest— into which weak nature would now and then 
betray them. I cannot help thinking that they were 
about right, though I fear that I shall be set down as 
little better than one of the wicked by Stiggins, Chad- 
band, Sleek & Co. 

Yes, there was a good deal of fun among the boys 
in those old days. Boys will be boys, however serious 
the family may be ; and if you take away their mar- 
bles, some other "vanity" will be sure to take their 
place. What jolly times we used to have Artillery 
Election ! How good the egg-pop used to taste, in 
spite of the dust of Park Street, which mingled itself 
liberally with the nutmeg ! How we used to save up 
our money for those festive days! How hard the 
arithmetic lessons seemed, particularly in the days 
immediately preceding vacation ! How dreary were 
those long winters ; and yet how short and pleasant 
they seemed to us! for we loved the runners, and 
skates, and jingling bells, and, as Pescatore, the Nea- 
politan poet, sings, "though bleak our lot, our hearts 
were warm." 

Newspapers were not a common luxury in those 
times, and I suppose that I took as little notice of 
passing events as most children ; yet I well remember 
the effect produced upon my mind one dark, threaten- 
ing afternoon, near the close of the last century, by 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

the announcement of the death of General Washing- 
ton. I had been accustomed to hear him talked about 
as the Father of his Country; I had studied the 
lineaments of his calm countenance, as they were set 
forth for the edification of my patriotism on some 
coarse handkerchiefs presented to me by a public- 
spirited aunt, until I began to look upon him as 
almost a supernatural being. If I had been told that 
the Old South had been removed to Dorchester 
Heights, or that the solar system was irreparably 
disarranged, I should not have been more completely 
taken aback than I was by that melancholy intelli- 
gence. I need not say that afterwards, when I grew 
up and found that Washington was not only a mortal 
like the rest of us, but that he sometimes spelt incor- 
rectly enough to have suited Noah Webster, (the 
inventor of the American language,) my supernat- 
ural view of that estimable general and patriot was 
very materially modified. I remember, too, how 
much I used to hear said about an extraordinary man 
who had risen up in France, and who seemed to be 
bending all Europe to his will. I never shall forget 
my astonishment on finding that Marengo was not a 
man, but a place. The discovery shamed me some- 
what, and afterwards I always read whatever news- 
papers came in my way. When some slow tub of a 
packet had come across the ocean, battling with the 
nor'-westers, and was announced to have made a 
"quick passage of forty-eight days," how eagerly I 
followed the rapid fortunes of the first Napoleon! 
His successes, as they intoxicated him, dazzled and 
bewildered my boyish imagination. I understood the 
matter imperfectly, but I loved Napoleon, and de- 
ll 292] 



BOYHOOD AND BOYS 

lighted to repeat to myself those stirring names, 
Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram, &c. How I hated Rus- 
sia after the disastrous campaign of 1812 ! (By the 
way, the exhibition of the Conflagration of Moscow, 
which used to have its intermittent terms of exhibi- 
tion here some years since, always brought back all 
my youthful feelings about the old Napoleon; the 
march of the artillery across the bridge, in the fore- 
ground of the scene, the rattling of the gun carriages, 
—that most warlike of all warlike sounds,— the 
burning city, the destruction of the Kremlin, all 
united in my mind to form a sentiment of admiration 
and sympathy for the baffled conqueror. If that ad- 
mirable show were to be revived once more, I should 
be tempted to take a season ticket to it, for I have no 
doubt that it would thrill me just as it did before my 
head could boast of a single gray hair.) Nor was 
my admiration for Napoleon's old marshals much 
below that which I entertained for the mighty genius 
who knew so well how to avail himself of their sur- 
passing bravery and skill. I felt as if the unconquer- 
able Murat, Lannes, Macdonald, Davoust, were my 
dearest and most intimate friends. The impetuous 
Ney, "the bravest of the brave, " as his soldiers 
called him; and the inflexible Massena, "the fa- 
vourite child of victory," figured in all my dreams, 
heading gallant charges, and withstanding deadly 
assaults, and occupied the best part of my waking 
thoughts. I do not doubt that there is many a school- 
boy nowadays who has dwelt with equal delight on 
the achievements of Scott and Taylor, of Canrobert, 
Bosquet and Pelissier, of Fenwick Williams and 
Havelock, and poor old Raglan, (that brave man 

C2933 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

upon whom the Circumlocution Office tried to fasten 
the blame of its own inefficiency, and who died 
broken-hearted, a melancholy illustration of the 
truth of Shakespeare's lines,— 

"The painful warrior, famoused for fight, 
After a thousand victories once foiled, 
Is from the book of honour razed quite, 
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled,") 

and who cherishes them as I did the heroes of half a 
century ago. 

But, as I was saying, Tom Brown's happy reminis- 
cences of Rugby have awakened once more all my 
boyish feelings ; for New England has its Rugby, and 
many of the readers of the old Rugby boy's pleasant 
pages will grow enthusiastic with the recollection of 
their schoolboy days at Exeter,— their snowballings, 
their manly sports, their mighty contests with the 
boys of the town,— and, though they may not claim 
the genius of the former head-master of Rugby for 
the guardian of their youthful sports and studies, 
will apply all of the old boy's praises of Dr. Arnold 
to the wise, judicious, and lovable Dr. Abbot. 

I always cherished an unbounded esteem for boys. 
The boy— the genuine human boy— may, I think, 
safely be set down as the noblest work of God. Pope 
claims that proud distinction for the honest man, but 
at the present time, the nearest we can come to such * 
a mythological personage as an honest man, (even 
though we add Argand burners, expensive Carcels, 
Davy safeties, and the Drummond light to the offi- 
cially recognized lantern of Diogenes,) is a real 
human boy, without a thought beyond his next holi- 



BOYHOOD AND BOYS 

day, with his heart overflowing with happiness, and 
his pockets chock full of marbles. Young girls can- 
not help betraying something of the in-dwelling 
vanity so natural to the sex; you can discern a self- 
consciousness in their every action which you shall 
look for in vain in the boy. Bless your heart!— you 
may dress a real boy up with superhuman care, and 
tryto impress on his young mind that he is the pride 
of his parents, and one of the most remarkable 
beings that ever visited this mundane sphere, and he 
will listen to you with becoming reverence and docil- 
ity; but his pure and honest nature will give the lie 
to all your flattery as soon as your back is turned, and 
in ten minutes you will find him kicking out the toes 
of his new boots, or rumpling his clean collar by 
"playing horse," or using the top of his new cap for 
a drinking vessel, and mixing in with the Smiths, and 
Browns, and Jinkinses, on terms of the most unques- 
tioned equality. The author of Tom Brown says 
that "boys follow one another in herds like sheep, 
for good or evil ; they hate thinking, and have rarely 
any settled principles." This is undoubtedly true; 
but still there is a generous instinct in boys which is 
far more trustworthy than those sliding, and unreli- 
able, and deceptive ideas which we call settled prin- 
ciples. The boy's thinking powers may be fallible, 
but his instinct is, in the main, sure. There is no 
aristocracy of feeling among boys. Linsey-woolsey 
and broadcloth find equal favour in their eyes. What 
they seek is just as likely to be found under coarse 
raiment as under purple and fine linen. If their com- 
panion is a real good feller, even though he be a son 
of a rich merchant or banker, he is esteemed as 

t>95] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

highly as if his father were an editor of a newspa- 
per. 

The nature of the boy is full of the very essence of 
generosity. The boys who hide away their ginger- 
bread, and eat it by themselves,— who lay up their 
Fourth of July five-cent pieces, for deposit in that 
excellent savings institution in School Street, instead 
of spending them for the legitimate India crackers of 
the "Sabbath Day of Freedom,"— are exceptions 
which only put the general rule beyond the pale of 
controversy. The real boy carries his apple in one 
of his pockets until it is comfortably warm, and he 
has found some companion to whom he may offer a 
festive bite ; for he feels, with Goethe, that 

" It were the greatest misery known 
To be in paradise alone;" 

and if, occasionally, when he sees his friend gratify- 
ing his palate with a fair round specimen of the same 
delicious fruit, he asks for a return of his kindness, 
with a beckoning gesture, and a free and easy— "I 
say, you know me, Bill I"— .he is moved thereto by no 
mere selfish liking for apples, but by a natural sense 
of friendship, and of the excellence of the apostolic 
principle of community of goods. This spirit of 
generosity may be seen in the friendships of boys, 
which are more entire and unselfish than those by 
which men seek to mitigate the irksomeness of life. 
There are more Oresteses and Pyladeses, more Da- 
mons and Pythiases, at twelve years of age than^at 
any later period of life. The devotedness of boyish 
friendship is peculiar from the fact that it is gen- 
erally reciprocal. In this it is superior to what we 

[296] 



BOYHOOD AND BOYS 

call love, which, if we may believe the French 
satirist, in most instances consists of one party who 
loves, and another who allows himself or herself to 
be loved. This phenomenon has not escaped the 
notice of that great observer of human nature, 
Thackeray. 

"What generous boy," he asks, "in his time has 
not worshipped somebody? Before the female en- 
slaver makes her appearance, every lad has a friend 
of friends, a crony of cronies, to whom he writes 
immense letters in vacation ; whom he cherishes in his 
heart of hearts; whose sister he proposes to marry 
in after life; whose purse he shares; for whom he 
will take a thrashing if need be; who is his hero." 

The generosity, and all the priceless charms of 
boyhood, rarely outlive its careless years of happi- 
ness. They are generally severely shaken, if not 
wholly destroyed, when the youth enters upon that 
crepuscular period of manhood in which his jacket 
is lengthened into a sack, and he begins to take his 
share in the conceit, and ambition, and selfishness of 
full-grown humanity. It is sad to think that a human 
boy, like the morning star, full of life and joy, may 
be stricken down by death, and all his hilarity stifled 
in the grave ; but to my mind it is even more melan- 
choly to think that he may live to grow up, and be 
hard, and worldly, and ungenerous as any of the rest 
of us. For this latter fate is accompanied by no con- 
solations such as naturally assuage our sorrow when 
an innocent child is snatched from among his play- 
things,— when "death has set the seal of eternity 
upon his brow, and the beautiful hath been made per- 
manent." I have seen few men who would be willing 

n297 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

to live over again their years of manhood, however 
prosperous and comparatively free from trouble they 
may have been ; but fewer still are those whom I have 
met, in whose memory the records of boyhood are 
not written as with a sunbeam. No, talk as we may 
about the happiness of manhood, the satisfaction of 
success in life, of gratified ambition, of the posses- 
sion of the Mary or Lizzie of one's choice,— what is 
it all compared to the unadulterate joy of that time 
when we built our card houses, and made our dirt 
pies, or drove our hoops, unvexed by the thoughts 
that Jinkins's house was larger than ours, or by any 
anxiety concerning the possibility of obtaining our 
next day's mutton-chop and potatoes? Except the 
momentary pain occasioned by the exercise of a ma- 
gisterial rattan upon our persons, or an occasional 
stern reproof from a hair-brush or the thin sole of a 
maternal shoe, that halcyon period is imperturbed, 
and may safely be called the happiest part of life. 

My venerated friend, Baron Nabem, who has 
been through all these "experiences," and therefore 
ought to know, insists upon it that no man really 
knows any thing until he is forty years old. For 
when he is eighteen or twenty years of age, he es- 
teems himself to be a sort of combination of the 
seven wise men of Greece in one person, with Hum- 
boldt, Mezzofanti, and Macaulay thrown in to make 
out the weight; at twenty-five, his confidence in his 
own infallibility begins to grow somewhat shaky; at 
thirty, he begins to wish that he might really know a 
tenth part as much as he thought he did ten years 
before; at thirty-five, he thinks that if he were added 
up, there would be very little to carry ; and at forty 

C2983 



BOYHOOD AND BOYS 

the great truth bursts upon him in all its effulgence 
that he is an ass. There are some who reach this 
desirable state of self-knowledge before they attain 
the age specified by the Baron; other some there are 
who never reach it at all, — as we all see numerous 
instances around us, — but these are mere exceptions 
strengthening rather than invalidating the common 
rule. It is a humiliating acknowledgment, but if we 
consider the uncertainty of all earthly things, if we 
try the depth of the sea of human science, and find 
how easy it is to touch bottom any where therein, if 
we convince ourselves of the impenetrability of the 
veil which bounds our mental vision, — I think that 
we shall be obliged to allow that the recognition of 
our own nothingness and asininity is the sum and per- 
fection of human knowledge. Now, Solomon tells 
us that he who increases knowledge increases sor- 
row; and it naturally follows that when a man has 
reached the knowledge which generally comes with 
his fortieth year, he is less happy than he was when 
he wrapped himself in the measureless content of his 
twentieth year's self-deception. And it follows, too, 
most incontrovertibly, that he is happier when unpos- 
sessed by that exaggerated self-esteem which ren- 
dered the discovery of his fortieth year necessary to 
him; and when is that time, if not during the careless, 
happy years of boyhood? 

The period of boyhood has been shortened very 
considerably within a few years; and real boys are 
becoming scarce. They are no sooner emancipated 
from the bright buttons which unite the two principal 
articles of puerile apparel, than they begin to pant 
for virile habiliments. Their choler is roused if they 

C2993 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

are denied a stand-up dickey. They sport canes. 
They delight to display themselves at lectures and 
concerts. Their young lips are not innocent of 
damns and short-sixes ; and they imitate the vulgarity 
and conceit of the young men of the present day so 
successfully that you find it hard to believe that they 
are mere children. Since this period of dearth in the 
boy market set in, of course the genuine, marketable 
article has become more precious to me. I remem- 
ber seeing an old physician in Paris, who was as true 
a boy as any beloved twelve-year-old that ever 
snapped a marble or stuck his forefinger into a pre- 
serve jar on an upper shelf in a china closet. A 
charming old fellow he was, too. He used to stop to 
see the boys play in the gardens of the Tuileries, and 
I knew him once to spend a whole afternoon in the 
avenue of the Champs Elysees looking at the puppet 
shows and other sights with the rest of the young- 
sters. He told me afterwards that that was one of 
the happiest days of his life ; for he had felt as if he 
were back again in the pleasant time before he knew 
any thing of that most uncertain of all uncertain 
things— the science of medicine; and he doubted 
whether any boy there had enjoyed the cheap amuse- 
ment more than himself. I envied him, for I knew 
that he who retained so much of the happy spirit of 
boyhood could not have outlived all of its generosity 
and simplicity. u Once a man and twice a child," 
says the old proverb ; and I cannot help thinking that 
if at the last we could only recall something of the 
sincerity, and innocence, and unselfishness of our 
early life, second childhood would indeed be a 
blessed thing. 

C3oo3 



JOSEPHINE 

GIRLHOOD AND GIRLS 

A BRIGHT-EYED, fair, young maiden, whose 
satchel I should insist upon carrying to school 
for her every morning if I were half a century 
younger, came to me a day or two after the publica- 
tion of my last essay, and, placing her white, taper 
fingers in my rough, Esau-like hand, said, "I liked 
your piece about the boys very much ; and now I hope 
that you'll write something about girls." "My dear 
Nellie," replied I, "if I should do that I should lose 
all my female acquaintances. I have a weakness for 
telling the truth, and there are some subjects con- 
cerning which it is very dangerous to speak out 'the 
whole truth and nothing but the truth/ " The gen- 
tle damsel smiled, and looked 

"Modest as justice, and did seem a palace 
For the crown'd truth to dwell in," 

as she still urged me on, and refused to see any dan- 
ger in my giving out the plainest truth about girl- 
hood. She had no fear, though all the truth were 
told; and I suppose that if we had some of Nellie's 
purity and gentleness remaining in our sere and 
selfish hearts, we should be much better and happier 
men and women, and should dread the truth as little 
as she does. But I must not begin my truth-telling 

Doin 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

by seeming to praise too highly, though it must be 
confessed, even at my time of life, if I were to de- 
scribe the charming young person I have referred to, 
with the merciless fidelity of a daguerreotype and an 
absence of hyperbole worthy of the late Dr. Bow- 
ditch's work on Navigation, I should seem to the 
unfortunate "general reader" who does not know 
Nell, to be indulging in the grossest flattery, and 
panting poesy would toil after me in vain. So I will 
put aside all temptations of that kind, and come down 
to the plain prose of my subject. 

There is, in fact, very little that can be said about 
girlhood. Those calm years that come between the 
commencement of the bondage of the pantalettes and 
emancipation from the tasks of school, present few 
salient points upon which the essayist (observe he 
never so closely) may turn a neat paragraph. They 
offer little that is startling or attractive either to 
writer or reader,— 

"As times of quiet and unbroken peace, 
Though for a nation times of blessedness, 
Give back faint echoes from the historian's page." 

The rough sports of boyhood, the out-door life which 
boys always take to so naturally, and all their habits 
of activity, give a strength of light and shade to their 
early years which is not to be found in girlhood. It 
is not enough to say that there is no difference in 
kind, but simply one in degree,— that the years of 
boyhood are calm and happy, and that those of girl- 
hood are so likewise,— that the former resemble the 
garish sunshine, and the latter the mitigated splen- 
dour of the moon ; for the characters of boys seem to 



JOSEPHINE-GIRLHOOD AND GIRLS 

be struck in a sharper die than those of girls, which 
gives them an absoluteness quite distinct from the 
feminine grace we naturally look for in the latter. 
The free-hearted boy, plunging into all sorts of fun 
without a thought of his next day's arithmetic lesson, 
and with a charming disregard of the expense of 
jackets and trousers, and the gentle girl, who clings 
to her mother's side, like an attendant angel, and 
contents herself with teaching long lessons to docile 
paper pupils in a quiet corner by the fireside, are 
representatives of two distinct classes in the order of 
nature, and (untheologically, of course, I might add) 
of grace. There is not a greater difference between 
a hockey and a crochet needle than there is between 
them. 

I have, as a general thing, a greater liking for 
boys than for girls ; for the vanity so common to all 
mankind is not developed in them at so early an age 
as in the latter. Still I must acknowledge that I have 
seen some splendid exceptions, the mere recollection 
of which almost tempts me to draw my pen through 
that last sentence. Can I ever forget— I can never 
forget — one into whose years of girlhood the beauty 
and grace of a long, pure life seemed to have been 
compressed? It was many years ago, and I was 
younger than I am now— so pardon me if I should 
seem to catch a little enthusiasm of spirit from the 
remembrance of those days. Like the ancient Queen 
of Carthage, Agnosco veteris vestigia flammte. I 
was living in London at that time, or rather at 
Hampstead, which had not then become a mere 
suburb of the great metropolis, but was a quiet town, 
whose bright doorplates, and well-scoured doorsteps, 

[303 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

and clean window curtains contrasted finely with the 
dingy brick walls of its houses, and impressed the 
visitor with the general prosperity and quiet respec- 
tability of its inhabitants. In my daily walks to and 
from the city, I frequently met a gentleman whose 
gray hairs and simple dignity of manners always 
attracted me towards him, and exacted from me an 
involuntary tribute of respectful recognition. One 
day he overtook me in a shower, and gave me the 
benefit of his umbrella and his friendship— for an 
intimacy which ended only with his death commenced 
between us from that hour. He was a gentleman of 
good family and education, who had seen thirty 
years of responsible service in the employ of the 
Honourable East India Company, had attained a 
competency, and had forsworn Leadenhall Street for 
a pension and a quiet retreat on the heights of Hamp- 
stead. His wife was a lady of cultivated tastes, 
whose sober wishes never learned to stray from the 
path of simple domestic duty, and the presence of 
the books in which she found her daily pleasures. 

"Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam; 
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home." 

Their only child, "one fair daughter, and no more," 
was a gentle and merry-hearted creature, who, in the 
short and murky days of November, filled that cot- 
tage with a more than June-like sunshine. Her 
parents always had a deep sympathy with that unfor- 
tunate Empress of France whose dismission from 
the throne was the commencement of the downward 
career of the first Napoleon, and bore witness to it 
by giving her name to their only child. They lived 

[3043 



JOSEPHINE-GIRLHOOD AND GIRLS 

only three or four doors from my lodgings, and there 
were few days passed after the episode of the um- 
brella in which I did not find a welcome in their quiet 
home. Their daughter was their only idol, and I 
soon found myself a convert to their innocent system 
of paganism. We all three agreed that Josey was 
the incarnation of all known perfections, and the 
lapse of forty years has not sufficed to weaken that 
conviction in my mind. She had risen just above the 
horizon of girlhood, and the natural beauty of her 
character made the beholder content to forget even 
the promise of her riper years. I do not think she 
was what the world calls handsome. I sometimes 
distrust my judgment in the matter of female beauty; 
indeed, some of my candid friends have told me that 
I had no judgment in such things. Well, as I was 
saying, Josey was not remarkable for personal 
beauty— in fact, I think I remember some persons of 
her own sex who thought her 'Very plain' , — "posi- 
tively homely"— and wondered what there was at- 
tractive about her. There are circumstances under 
which I should not have hesitated to attribute such 
remarks to motives of envy and jealousy; but as they 
came from girls whose attractions of every kind were 
far below those of the gentle creature whom they de- 
lighted to criticise, how can I account for them? 
Josey's complexion was dark— her forehead, like 
those of the best models of female comeliness among 
the ancients, low. Her teeth were pearly and uni- 
form, and her clear, dark eyes seemed to reflect the 
happiness and hope which were the companions of 
her youth. Her beauty was not of that kind which 
consists in mere regularity of features; it was far 

C305] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

superior to that. You could discern under those 
traits, none of which were conspicuous, a combina- 
tion of mental and social qualities which were far 
above the fleeting charms that delight so many, and 
which age, instead of destroying, would increase and 
perfect. She was quiet and gentle, without being 
dull or moody; light-hearted and cheery, without 
being frivolous ; and witty, without being pert or con- 
ceited. Her unaffected goodness of heart found 
many an opportunity of exercise. I often heard of 
her among the poor, and among those who needed 
words of consolation even more than the necessaries 
of life. It was her delight to intercede with the 
magistrate who had inflicted a punishment on some 
disorderly brother of one of her poor clients, and to 
obtain his pardon by promising to watch over him 
and insure his future good behaviour; and there 
were very few, among the most reckless, who were 
not restrained by the thought that their offences 
would give pain to the kind-hearted girl who had so 
willingly become their protector. 

During the months that I lived at Hampstead my 
intercourse with that excellent family was as familiar 
as if I had been one of their own kindred. A little 
attack of rheumatism, which confined me to my lodg- 
ing for a fortnight or three weeks, proved the con- 
stancy of their friendship. The old gentleman came 
daily to see me — told me all the news from the city, 
and read to me; the mother sent me some of her 
favourite books ; and Josey came to get assistance in 
her Latin and French, and brought me sundry little 
pots of grape jelly and other preserves, which tasted 
all the sweeter for being the work of her fair hands. 

C3063 



JOSEPHINE-GIRLHOOD AND GIRLS 

It was a sad parting when I was called away to 
America— sad for me; for I told them that I hoped 
that my absence from England would be but tem- 
porary, when I felt inwardly that it might extend to 
several years. 

Two or three months after my arrival at home, I 
received a letter from the old gentleman, written in 
his deliberate, round, clerk-like style, informing me 
of his wife's death. A note was enclosed from Josey, 
in which she described with her pencil the spot where 
her mother was buried in the old churchyard, and 
told me of her progress in her studies. More than a 
year passed by without my hearing from them at all, 
two or three of my letters to them having miscarried. 
Nearly seven years elapsed before I visited England 
again. Two years before that, I had read the de- 
cease of the old gentleman, in a stray London news- 
paper. I had written to Josey, sympathizing with 
her in her desolation, but had received no answer. 
So, the day after my arrival in London, I deter- 
mined to make a search for the beloved Josey. I 
went to Hampstead, and my heart beat quicker as I 
approached the cottage where I had spent so many 
happy hours. My throat felt a little choky, as I rec- 
ognized the neat bit of hedge before the door, the 
graceful vine which overhung it, and the familiar 
arrangement of the flower pots in the frames outside 
the windows; but my hopes received a momentary 
check when I found a strange name on the plate 
above the knocker. I knocked, and inquired con- 
cerning the former occupants of the house. After a 
severe effort to overcome the Boeotian stupidity of 
the housemaid, she ushered me into the little break- 
Do; 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

fast room, and said she would "call her missus." 
Almost before I had time to look about me, Josey 
entered the room. The little girl whose Latin exer- 
cises I had corrected, and who had always lived in 
my memory as she appeared in those days, suddenly 
came before me 

"A perfect woman, nobly planned, 
To warn, to comfort, and command; 
And yet a spirit still and bright 
With something of an angel light." 

Yet she was hardly changed at all. She had lost 
none of those charming qualities which had made the 
thought of her precious to me during long years of 
absence. She had gained the maturity and dignity 
of womanhood without losing any of the simplicity 
and light-heartedness of girlhood. She was mar- 
ried. Her husband was a literary man of consider- 
able reputation. Though only in middle age, he was 
a great sufferer with the gout. He was, generally 
speaking, a patient man; but I found, after I became 
intimate with him, that his pains sometimes made 
him express himself with a force of diction some- 
what in advance of the religious prejudices of his 
gentle Josey, who tended him and ministered to his 
wants like an angel, as she was. But excuse me for 
wandering so far from my theme. To make a long 
story short, Josey went to Italy with her husband, 
who had been ordered thither by his physicians, and 
I never saw her afterwards. She deposited her hus- 
band's remains in the cemetery where those of Shel- 
ley and Keats repose, and found for two or three 
years a consolation for her bereaved spirit in resi- 



JOSEPHINE-GIRLHOOD AND GIRLS 

dence in that city which more than all others pro- 
claims to our unwilling hearts the vanity and 
transitoriness of this world's hopes, and the glory of 
the unseen eternal. Years after, I met one of her 
husband's friends in Paris, who told me that some 
four years after his death, she had entered a convent 
of a religious order devoted to the reclaiming of the 
degraded of her sex, in Brussels. There she had 
found a fitting occupation for the natural benevolence 
of her heart, and the peace which the world could 
not give. She had concealed the glory of her good 
works under her vow of obedience— her personality 
was hidden under the common habit of her Order— 
the very name which was so dear to me had been 
exchanged for another on the day that saw her cov- 
ered with the white veil of the novice. I was about 
returning to England from the continent when I 
heard this, and I resolved to take Belgium's fair 
capital in my route. I found the convent readily 
enough, and waited in its uncarpeted but scrupulously 
clean parlour some time for the Lady Superior. She 
was a lady of dignified mien, with the clear com- 
plexion, the serene brow, and the dovelike eyes so 
common among nuns, and her face lighted up, as she 
spoke, with a gentle smile, which seemed almost like 
a presage of immortality. I explained my errand, 
and she told me that the good English sister had 
been dead more than a year. The intelligence pained 
me, and it gave me a feeling of self-reproach to 
notice that the nun, who had been with her in her last 
hour, spoke of her as if she had merely passed into 
another part of the convent we were in. The Su- 
perior, perceiving my emotion, conducted me through 

C309] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

the garden of the convent to a shady corner of the 
grounds, where there were several graves. She 
stopped before a mound, over which a rose bush bent 
affectionately, as if its white blossoms craved some- 
thing of the purity which was enshrined beneath it. 
At its head was a simple wooden cross, on which was 
inscribed the name of "Sister Helen Agnes," the 
date of her death, and the common supplication that 
she might rest in peace; and that was the only me- 
morial of Josey that remained to me. 

I have not forgotten, dear reader, that I am writ- 
ing about girls ; but having brought forward one who 
always seemed to me to be about as near perfection 
as it is vouchsafed to poor humanity to approach, I 
could not help following her to the end, and showing 
how she went from a beautiful girlhood to a still 
more beautiful womanhood, and a death which all 
of us might envy; and how lovely and harmonior^ 
was her whole career. For I feel that the considera- 
tion of the contrast which most of the young female 
readers of these pages will discover between them- 
selves and Josey, will do them some good. 

I do not know of a more quietly funny sight than 
a group of school-girls, all talking as fast as their 
tongues can wag, (forty- woman power,) and cling- 
ing inextricably together like a parcel of macaroni, a 
la Napolitaine. Their independence is quite re- 
freshing. Lady Blessington in her diamonds never 
descended the grand staircase at Covent Garden 
Opera House with half the consciousness of making 
a sensation, that you may notice in these school-girls 
whenever you take your walks abroad. It is delight- 
ful to see them step off so proudly, and look you in 

C3io3 



JOSEPHINE-GIRLHOOD AND GIRLS 

the face so coolly, thinking all the time of just nothing 
at all. Their boldness is the boldness of innocence ; 
for perfect modesty does not even know how to 
blush. How vain they grow as they advance in their 
teens! How careful they are that the crinoline 
"sticks out" properly before they venture on the 
road to school ! If Mother Goose (of blessed mem- 
ory) could take a look into this world now, she 
would wish to revise her ancient rhyme to her 
patrons,— 

"Come with a whoop— come with a call," &c.,— 

for she would find that it is now their custom to come 
with a hoop when they come for a call. 

When unhappy Romeo stands in old Capulet's 
garden, under the pale beams of the "envious moon," 
and watches the unconscious Juliet upon the balcony, 
he utters, in the course of his incoherent soliloquial 
apostrophe, these remarkable words concerning that 
interesting young person : — 

"She speaks, yet she says nothing." 

I have seen many young ladies of Juliet's time 
of life in my day of whom the same thing might 
be said. They indeed speak, yet say nothing. Yet 
take them on such a subject as the trimming of 
a new bonnet for Easter Sunday, or any of those en- 
tertaining topics more or less connected with the 
adornment of their persons, and how voluble they 
are! To the stronger sex, which of course cares 
nothing about dress, being entirely free from vanity, 
the terms used in their never-ending colloquies on 

E3"3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

such themes are mere unmeaning words ; but I must 
do the gentler side of humanity the justice to say that 
they are not all vanity, as their fathers and husbands 
find to their dismay, when the quarterly bills come in, 
that gimp, and flounces, and trimming generally, 
have a real, tangible existence. 

How sentimental they are! In my young days 
albums were all the rage among young ladies; but 
now they seem to be somewhat out of date, and 
young ministers have taken their place. What pains 
will they not take to get a bow from the Rev. Mr. 
Simkins! They swarm around him after service, 
like flies around the bung of a molasses cask. 
Raphael never had such a face as his; Massillon 
never preached as he does. What a wilderness of 
worsted work are they not willing to travel over for 
his sake ! How do they exhaust their inventive fac- 
ulties in the search after new patterns for lamp mats, 
watch cases, pen wipers, and slippers to encase the 
feet at which they delight to sit ! But when Simkins 
marries old Thompson's youngest daughter and a 
snug property, he finds a sad abatement in his popu- 
larity. The Rev. Mr. Jenkins, a young preacher 
with a face every whit as milk-and-watery as his own, 
succeeds to the throne he occupied, and reigns in his 
stead among the volatile devotees ; and Simkins then 
sees that his popularity was no more an evidence of 
the favour his preaching of the gospel found among 
those thoughtless young people than was the popu- 
larity of the good-looking light comedian, after 
whom the girls ran as madly as they did after his 
own white neckerchief and nicely-brushed black 
frock coat. 

Dial! 



JOSEPHINE-GIRLHOOD AND GIRLS 

Exaggeration is one of the great faults of girl- 
hood. Whatever meets their eyes Is either "splen- 
did" or "horrid." They delight to exaggerate their 
likes and dislikes. Self-restraint seems to be a term 
not contained in their lexicon. They take a momen- 
tary fancy to a young man, and flatter him with their 
smiles until some new face takes his place in their 
fleeting memory. In this way many young hearts are 
frittered away in successive flirtations before their 
possessors have reached womanhood. But it would 
be wrong to confine action from mere blind impulse 
and exaggeration to young girls alone. I think it is 
St. Paul who gives us some good counsel about 
"speaking the truth in love." I fear that very few 
victims of the tender passion, from Pyramus and 
Thisbe down to Petrarch and Laura, and from the 
latter couple down to Mr. Smith with Miss Brown 
hanging on his arm,— who have not sadly needed the 
advice of the Apostle of the Gentiles. I have seen 
very few people in my day who really speak the 
truth in love. Therefore I will not blame girls for 
a fault which is common to all mankind. 

Impulse is commonly supposed to be inconsistent 
with cunning ; but in most girls I think the two things 
are singularly combined. I am told that there is an 
academy in this city, frequented by many young wo- 
men, known as the School of Design. The fact is a 
gratifying one to me; for my observation of girlish 
nature had led me to suppose that there were very 
few indeed of the young ladies of these days who 
required any tuition in the arts of design. I hail the 
fact as a good omen for the sex. Action from im- 
pulse carries its young victims to the extremes of 

E3I33 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

good and evil. Queen Dido is a fair type of the 
majority of her sex. Defeated in their hopes, they 
are willing to make a funeral pile of all that remains 
to them. But there is a spirit of generosity in them 
which does not find a place in the hearts of men. It 
was the part of Eve to bring death into this world, 
and all our woe, by her inquisitiveness and credulity; 
but it was reserved for Adam to inaugurate the 
meanness of mankind by laying all the blame to his 
silly little wife. The accusation ought to have blis- 
tered Adam's cowardly tongue. 

But I am making a long preachment, and yet I 
have said very little. I must leave my young friends, 
however, to draw their own lessons from the por- 
trait I have given of one whose perfections would 
far outweigh the silliness and vanity of a generation 
of girls. Let them take the gentle Josey as the 
model of their youth, and they will not wish to sculp- 
ture their later career after any less perfect shape. 
There will then be fewer heartless flirts, fewer vain 
exhibitors of the works of the milliner and dress- 
maker parading the streets, and more true women 
presiding over the homes of America. The imita- 
tion of her virtues will be found a better preservative 
of beauty than any eau lustrale; for it will create a 
beauty which "time's effacing fingers" are powerless 
to destroy, and give to those who practise it a serene 
and lovely old age, whose recollection of the past, 
instead of awakening any self-reproach, shall be a 
source of perpetual benediction. 



C3H3 



SHAKESPEARE AND HIS 
COMMENTATORS 

IT was a favourite wish of the beneficent Caligula 
that all mankind had but one neck, that he might 
finish them off at a single chop. It would ill comport 
with my known modesty, were I to lay claim to any 
thing like the all-embracing humanity of the old 
Roman philanthropist; but I must acknowledge that 
I have frequently felt inclined to apply his pious aspi- 
ration to the commentators on Shakespeare. Impa- 
tience is not my prevailing weakness; but these 
pestilent annotators have often been instrumental in 
convincing me that I am no stoic. I have frequently 
regretted the days of my youth, when no envious 
commentary obscured the brilliancy of that genius 
which has consecrated the language through which it 
finds utterance, and made it venerable to the scholars 
of all lands and ages. My love of Shakespeare, like 
the gout which has been stinging my right foot all 
the morning, is hereditary. My revered grand- 
mother was very fond of solid English literature. 
She had not had, it is true, the advantages which the 
young people of the present day rejoice in; she had 
not studied in any of those seminaries which polish 
off an education in a most Arabian-Nightsy style of 
expedition, and send a young lady home in the middle 
of her teens, accomplished in innumerous ologies, 
and knowing little or nothing that is really useful, or 

C3I53 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

that will attract her to intellectual pursuits or pleas- 
ure in after life. She had acquired what is infinitely 
better than the superficial omniscience which is so 
much cultivated in these days. The more active 
duties of life pleased her not; and Shakespeare was 
the never-failing resource of her leisure hours. Mr. 
Addison's Spectator was for her a "treasure of con- 
tentment, a mine of delight, and, with regard to 
style, the best book in the world." I shall never for- 
get that happy day (anterior even to the jacket era 
of my life) when she took me upon her knee, and 
read to me the speeches of Marullus, and Mark 
Antony, and Brutus. In that hour I became as sin- 
cere a devotee as ever bent down before the shrine 
of Shakespeare's genius. Nor has that innocent 
fanaticism abated any of its ardour under the weight 
laid upon me by increasing years. The theatre has 
lost many of its old charms for me. The friend- 
ships of youth — the only enduring intimacies, for our 
palms grow callous in the promiscuous intercourse of 
the world, and cannot easily receive new impressions 
— have either been terminated by that inexorable 
power whose chilling touch is merciless alike to love 
and enmity, or have been interfered with by the vary- 
ing pursuits of life. But Shakespeare still maintains 
his wonted sway, and my loyalty to him has not been 
disturbed by any of the revolutionary movements 
which have made such changes in most other things. 
Martin Farquhar Tupper has written, but I am so 
old-fashioned in my prejudices that I find myself 
constantly turning to my Shakespeare, in preference 
even to that gifted and proverbially philosophic 
bard. 

C3I6] 



SHAKESPEARE AND HIS COMMENTATORS 

But I am wandering. From the day I have men- 
tioned, Robinson Crusoe was obliged to abdicate, 
and England's "monarch bard" (as Mr. Sprague 
calls Anne Hathaway' s husband) reigned in his 
stead. I first devoured the Julius Caesar. I say 
"devoured," for no other word will express the 
eager earnestness with which I read. The last time 
I read that play through, it was "within a bowshot 
where the Caesars dwelt," and but a few minutes' 
walk from the palace which now holds great Pom- 
pey's statua, at whose foot the mighty Julius fell. 
Increase of appetite grew rapidly by what it fed on, 
and I was not long in learning as much about the 
black-clad prince, the homeless king, the exacting 
usurer, the fat knight and his jolly companions, the 
remorseful Thane, and generous, jealous Moor, as 
I knew about Brutus and the other red republican as- 
sassins of imperial Rome. My love of Shakespeare 
was greatly edified by a friendship which I formed 
in my earliest foreign journeyings. It was before 
the days of railways,— which, convenient as they are, 
have robbed travelling of half its zest, by rendering 
it so common. I had been making a little tour 
through the north of France. I had admired the 
white caps and pious simplicity of the peasants of 
Normandy, and had drunk in that exaltation of soul 
which the lofty nave of the majestic Cathedral of 
Amiens always imparts, and was about returning to 
Paris, when a rheumatic attack arrested my progress 
and prolonged my stay in the pleasant city of Douai. 
I there met accidentally with an English monk of 
that grand old Benedictine order, whose history for 
more than twelve centuries has been the history of 

C3i7] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

civilization, and literature, and religion. He was 
descended from one of those old families which re- 
fused to modify their creed at the demand of a 
divorce-seeking king. He was a man of clear in- 
tellect and fascinating simplicity of character. He 
seemed to carry sunshine with him wherever he went. 
He occupied a professional chair in the English Col- 
lege attached to the Benedictine Monastery at Douai, 
and when his class hours were ended, he daily came 
to visit me. His sensible and sprightly conversation 
did more towards untying the rheumatic knots in 
my poor shoulder, than all the pills and lotions for 
which M. le Medecin charged me so roundly. When 
I visited him in his cell, I found that a well-worn 
copy of Shakespeare was the only companion of his 
Breviary, his Aquinas and St. Bernard on his study 
table. He loved Shakespeare for himself alone. He 
never used him as a lay figure on which he might 
display the drapery of a pedant. He hated com- 
mentators as heartily as a man so sincerely religious 
can hate any thing except sin, and was as earnest in 
his predilection for Shakespeare, u without note or 
comment," as his dissenting fellow-countrymen 
would have wished him to be for a similar edition of 
the only other inspired book in the world. He had 
his theories, however, concerning Shakespeare's 
characters, and we often talked them over together; 
but I must do him the justice to say that he never 
published any of them. I always regarded this fact 
as a splendid evidence of the entireness of his self- 
abnegation, and of his extraordinary advancement in 
the path of religious perfection. Many have taken 
the three monastic vows by which he was bound, and 



SHAKESPEARE AND HIS COMMENTATORS 

have lived up to them with conscientious fidelity ; but 
few scholars have studied Shakespeare as he did, and 
yet resisted the temptation to tell the world all about 
it in a book. 

Mousing the other day in the library of a venera- 
ble citizen of Boston, who is no less skilled in the 
gospel (let us hope) than in the law, I stumbled over 
a seedy-looking folio containing A Treatise of Orig- 
inal Sinne, by one Anthony Burgesse, who flourished 
in England something more than two centuries ago. 
One of the discoloured fly-leaves of this entertaining 
tome informed me, in a hand-writing which resem- 
bled a dilapidated rail-fence looked at from the win- 
dow of an express train, that Jacobus Keith me 
possedit, An. Dom. 1655 ; and also bore this inscrip- 
tion, so pertinent to my present theme: "Expositors 
are wise when they are not otherwise." I feel that it 
is safe to leave my readers to make the application of 
this apothegm to the Shakespearean annotators of 
their acquaintance, so few of whom are wise, so 
many otherwise. I think it was the late Mr. Hazlitt 
who said (and if it was not, it ought to have been) 
that if you desire to know to what sublimity human 
genius is capable of ascending, you must read Shake- 
speare; but that if you seek to ascertain to what a 
depth of imbecility the intellect of man may be 
brought down, you must read his commentators. 

Notwithstanding the low estimate which I am in- 
clined to place upon the labour of the majority of the 
commentators on Shakespeare, still I have often felt 
a strong temptation to enroll myself among them. 
Not all their stupidity in explaining things which are 
clear to the meanest capacity, not all their pedantry 

C3I93 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

in elucidating matters which are simply inexplicable, 
not all their inordinate voluminousness, could quench 
my ambition to fasten my roll of waste paper to the 
bob (already so unwieldy) of the Shakespearean 
kite. Others have soared into fame by such means ; 
why should not I? We ought not to study Shake- 
speare so many years for nothing, and I feel that a 
sacred duty would be neglected if the result of my 
researches were withheld from my suffering fellow- 
students. But let me be more merciful than other 
commentators ; let me confine my remarks to a single 
play. From that one you may learn the tenor of my 
theories concerning the others; and if you wish for 
another specimen, I shall consider that I have 
achieved an unheard-of triumph in this department 
of literature. 

The tragedy of Hamlet has always been regarded 
as one of the most creditable of Shakespeare's per- 
formances. It needs no new commendation from 
me. Dramatic composition has made great progress 
within the two hundred and sixty years that have 
elapsed since Hamlet was written, yet few better 
things are produced nowadays. We may as well 
acknowledge the humiliating fact that Hamlet, with 
all its age, is every whit as good as if it had been 
written since Lady Day, and were announced on the 
playbills of to-morrow night, with one of Mr. Bou- 
cicault's most eloquent and elaborate prefaces. The 
character of Hamlet has been much discussed, but, 
with all due respect for the genius of those who have 
fatigued their reader with their treatment of the 
subject, I would humbly suggest that they are all 
wrong. Hamlet resembles a picture which has been 

C32o] 



SHAKESPEARE AND HIS COMMENTATORS 

scoured, and retouched, and varnished, and restored, 
until you can hardly see any thing of the original. 
Critics and commentators have bedaubed the orig- 
inal character so thoroughly, and those credulous 
people who rejoice that Chatham's language is their 
mother tongue, have heard so much of their estimate 
of Hamlet's character, that they receive them on 
faith, flattering themselves all the while that they 
are paying homage to the Hamlet of Shakespeare. 
High-flown philosophy exerts its powers upon the 
theme, and Goethe gives it as his opinion that the 
dramatist wished to portray the effects of a great 
action, imposed as a duty upon a mind too feeble for 
its accomplishment, and compares it to an oak 
planted in a china vase, proper to receive only the 
most delicate flowers, and which flies to pieces as 
soon as the roots begin to strike out. 

Now let us drop all this metaphysical and poetical 
cant, and go back to the play itself. Shakespeare 
will prove his own best expositor, if we read him 
with docile minds, having previously instructed our- 
selves concerning the history of the time of which he 
wrote. There is a tradition common in the north of 
Ireland that Hamlet's father was a native of that 
country, named Howndale, and that he followed the 
trade of a tailor; that he was captured by the Danes, 
in one of their expeditions against that fair island, 
and carried to Jutland; that he married and set up in 
business again in that cold region, but that he after- 
wards forsook the sartorial for the regal line, by 
usurping the throne of Denmark. The tradition 
represents him to have been a man of violent char- 
acter, a hard drinker, and altogether a most unprin- 

[32i] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

cipled and unamiable person, though an excellent 
tailor. Now, if we take the old chronicle of Saxo 
Grammaticus, (Historia Danorum,) from which 
Shakespeare drew the plot for his tragedy, we shall 
find there little that does not harmonize with this 
tradition. Saxo Grammaticus tells us that Hamlet 
was the son of Horwendal, who was a famous pirate 
of Jutland, whom the king, Huric, feared so much, 
that, to propitiate him, he was obliged to appoint 
him governor of Jutland, and afterwards to give 
him his daughter Gertrude in marriage. Thus he 
obtained the throne. The old Irish name, Hown- 
dale, might easily have been corrupted into Horwen- 
dal by the jaw-breaking Northmen, and for the rest, 
the Danish chronicle and the Irish tradition are per- 
fectly consistent. That there was frequent commu- 
nication at that early period between Denmark and 
Ireland, I surely need not take the trouble to prove. 
All the early chronicles of both of those countries 
bear witness to it. It was to the land evangelized by 
St. Patrick that Denmark was indebted for the bless- 
ings of education and the Christian faith. But the 
visits of the Danes were not dictated by any holy 
zeal for the salvation or mental advancement of 
their benefactors, if we may believe all the stories of 
their piratical expeditions. An Irish monk of the 
great monastery of Banchor, who wrote very good 
Latin for the age in which he lived, alludes to this 
period in his country's history in a poem, one line of 
which is sometimes quoted, even now :— 

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. 
"Time was, O Danes, we feared your gifts." 

C322 3 



SHAKESPEARE AND HIS COMMENTATORS 

The great Danish poet, (Ehlenschlaeger, makes fre- 
quent allusions in the course of his epic, The Gods of 
the North, to the relations that once existed between 
Denmark and Ireland, and to the fact that his native 
land received from Ireland the custom of imbibing 
spirituous liquors in large quantities. 

Hamlet's Irish parentage would naturally be con- 
cealed as much as possible by him, as it might 
prejudice his claims to the throne of Denmark; 
therefore we can hardly expect to find the ancient 
legend confirmed in the play, except in a casual man- 
ner. The free, outspoken, Irish nature would make 
itself known occasionally. Thus we find that when 
Horatio tells him that "there 's no offence," he re- 
bukes him with 

"Yes, by St. Patrick, but there is, Horatio!" 

There certainly needs no ghost come from the grave 
to tell us that no true-born Scandinavian would have 
sworn in an unguarded moment by the Apostle of 
Ireland. Again, when Hamlet thinks of killing his 
uncle, the wrongful king, he apostrophizes himself 
by the name which he probably bore when he as- 
sisted his father (whose death he wishes to avenge) 
in his shop in Jutland:— 

"Now, might I do it, Pat, now he is praying." 

Then, too, he speaks to Horatio of the "funeral 
baked meats" coldly furnishing forth the marriage 
table at his mother's second espousal. The custom 
of baking meats is as well known to be of Irish ori- 
gin, as that of roasting them is to be peculiar to the 
northern nations of continental Europe. 

[323 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

The frequent allusions in the course of the play to 
drinking customs not only prove that Hamlet de- 
scended from that nation whose hospitality is its 
greatest fault, but that he and his family were far 
from being the refined and philosophic people some 
of the commentators would have us believe. Thus 
he promises his old companion,— 

"We '11 teach you to drink deep ere you depart," — 

which the most prejudiced person will freely allow 
to be truly a Cor&onian phrase. This frailty of the 
family may be seen throughout the play. In the last 
scene, it is especially apparent. All the royal family 
of Denmark seem to have joined an intemperance 
society. The queen even, in spite of her husband's 
remonstrances, joins in the carousal. Hamlet, too, 
while he is dying, starts up on hearing Horatio say, 
"Here's yet some liquor left," and insists upon the 
cup being given to him. I know that it may be urged, 
on the other hand, that in the scene preceding the 
first appearance of the ghost before Hamlet, he in- 
dulges in some remarks which would prove him to 
have entertained sentiments becoming his com- 
patriot, the noble Father Mathew. Speaking of the 
custom of draining down such frequent draughts of 
Rhenish, he pronounces it to his mind 

"a custom 
More honoured in the breach than the observance." 

It must be remembered that the occasion on which 
this speech was uttered was a solemn one. Under 
such supernatural circumstances old Silenus or the 
King of Prussia himself might be pardoned for grow- 
th 3 



SHAKESPEARE AND HIS COMMENTATORS 

ing somewhat homiletic on the subject of temper- 
ance. The conclusion of this speech has given the 
commentators a fine chance to exercise their in- 
genuity. 

"The dram of bale 

Doth all the noble substance often doubt 

To his own scandal." 

They have called it the "dram of base," the "dram 
of eale," &c, and then have been as much in the dark 
as before. Some have thought that Shakespeare in- 
tended to have written it "the dram of Bale," as a 
sly hit at Dr. John Bale, the first Protestant Bishop 
of Ossory in Ireland, who was an unscrupulous 
dram-drinker as well as dramatist, for he wrote a 
play called "Kynge Johan," which was reprinted 
under the editorial care of my friend, Mr. J. O. 
Halliwell, by the Camden Society, in 1838. But this 
attempt to make it reflect upon the Ossory prelate is 
entirely uncalled for. A little research would have 
showed that bale was a liquor somewhat resembling 
our whiskey of the true R. G. brand, the consump- 
tion of which in the dram-shops of his country the 
Prince Hamlet so earnestly deplored. The great 
Danish philosopher, V. Scheerer Homboegger, in 
his autobiography, speaks of it, and says that like all 
the Danes he prefers it to either wine or ale, or 
water even: Der er vand, her er vun og oel, — men 
allested baele drikker saaledes de Dansker. ( Auto- 
biog. II. xiii. Ed. Copenhag.) 

As to the proofs that Hamlet's family was closely 
connected with the tailoring interest, they are so 
thickly scattered through the entire tragedy, and are 
so apparent even to the casual reader, that, even if 

C325 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

I had room, it would only be necessary to mention a 
few of the principal ones. In the very first scene in 
which he is introduced, Hamlet talks in an experi- 
enced manner about his "inky cloak," "suits of sol- 
emn black," "forms" and "modes," and tries to 
defend himself from the suspicion which he feels is 
attached to him by many of the courtiers, by saying 
plainly, "I know not seams" This first speech of 
Hamlets is a key to the wanton insincerity of his 
character. His mother has begged him to change 
his clothes,— to "cast his nighted colour off,"— and 
he answers her requests with, "I shall in all my best 
obey you, madam ;" yet it is notorious that he heeds 
not this promise, but wears black to the end of his 
career. 

He repeatedly uses the expressions which a tailor 
would naturally employ. His figures of speech fre- 
quently smell of the shop. As, for instance, he says 
to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, "The appurte- 
nance of welcome is fashion and ceremony. Let me 
comply with you in this garb ;" in the scene preceding 
the play he declares that, though the devil himself 
wear black, he'll "have a suit of sables." In the 
interview with his mother, who may be supposed not 
to have forgotten the early history of the family, he 
uses such figures with still greater freedom :— 

"That monster custom who all sense doth eat 
Of habit's devil, is angel yet in this ; 
That to the use of actions fair and good 
He likewise gives a frock or livery, 
That aptly is put on." 

In his instruction to the players he speaks of tearing 
"a passion to tatters, to very rags" and says of cer- 

C3263 



SHAKESPEARE AND HIS COMMENTATORS 

tain actors that when he saw them it seemed to him 
as if "some of nature's journeymen had made men 
and not made them well." In the fourth act, he calls 
Rosencrantz a sponge. 

What better evidence of the skill of Hamlet and 
his father in their common trade can we have than 
that afforded by the fair Ophelia, who speaks of the 
Prince as "the glass of fashion and the mould of 
form"? In the chamber scene with his mother, 
Hamlet is taken entirely off his guard by the sudden 
appearance of his father's ghost, whom he apos- 
trophizes, not in the set phrases which he used when 
Horatio and Marcellus were by, but as "a king of 
shreds and patches." Old Polonius does not wish 
his daughter to marry a tailor, but is too polite to tell 
her all of his objections to Lord Hamlet's suit; so he 
cloaks his reasons under these figures of speech, in- 
stead of telling her, out of whole cloth, that Hamlet 
is a tailor, and the match will never do :— 

"Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers, 
Not of that dye which there in vestments show, 
But implorators of unholy suits," &c. 

Some late editions of the Bard make the second line 
of this passage read,— 

"Not of that die which their investments show," 



which is as evident a corruption of the text as any of 
those detected by the indefatigable Mr. Payne Col- 
lier. 

If any further proof is needed of a matter which 
must be clear to every reasoning mind, it may be 
found in that solemn scene in which the Prince, op- 

[327 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

pressed by the burden of a life embittered and de- 
feated in its highest aims, meditates suicide. Now, 
if there is a time when all affectation of worldly rank 
would be likely to be forgotten and swallowed up in 
the contemplation of the terrible deed which occu- 
pies the mind, it is such a time as this. And here we 
find Shakespeare as true as Nature herself. The 
soldier, weary of life, uses the sword his enemies 
once feared, to end his troubles. Hamlet's mind 
overleaps the interval of his princely life, and the 
weapon which is most naturally suggested by his 
youthful career is "a bare bodkin." 

Had I not already written more than I intended 
on this subject, I might go on with many other evi- 
dences of the truth of my view of this remarkable 
character. I did wish also to show that Hamlet was 
a most disreputable character, and by no means en- 
titled to the sympathy or admiration of men. Suffice 
it to say that he was, even to his last hour, fonder of 
drink than became a prince (except perhaps a Prince 
Regent) —that he treated Ophelia improperly— that 
he often spoke of his step-father in profane terms— 
that he indulged in the use of profane language even 
in his soliloquies, as for example,— 

"The spirit I have seen 
May be a devil ; and the devil hath power 
To assume a pleasing shape ; yea, and perhaps 
Out of my weakness, and my melancholy, 
(As he is very potent with such spirits) 
Abuses me too,— damme!" 

His familiarity with the players likewise is an incon- 
trovertible proof of his depravity; for the theatrical 
people of Denmark in his age were not what the 



SHAKESPEARE AND HIS COMMENTATORS 

players of our day are. They were too often people 
of loose and reckless lives, careless of moral and 
social obligations, and whose company would by no 
means be acceptable to a truly philosophic prince. 

If this pre-Raphaelite sketch of Hamlet's char- 
acter should seem unsatisfactory, it can be filled out 
by a perusal of the play itself, if the reader will only 
cast aside the trammels which the commentators 
have placed in his way. It may be a new view to most 
of my readers ; but I am convinced that the theory, 
of which I have given an outline, is fully as tenable 
as many of the countless conjectural essays to which 
that matchless drama has given rise. If it be untrue, 
why, then we must conclude that all similar theories, 
though they may be sustained by as many passages as 
I have adduced in support of my Hibernico-sartorial 
hypothesis, are equally devoid of a foundation of 
common sense. If my theory stands, I have the satis- 
faction of having connected my name (which would 
else be soon forgotten) with one of Shakespeare's 
masterpieces; and that is all that any commentator 
has ever done. And if my theory proves false, it 
consoles me to think that the splendour of the genius 
which I so highly reverence is in no wise obscured 
thereby; for the stability and grandeur of the temple 
cannot be impaired by the obliteration of the ambi- 
tious scribblings and chalk-marks with which some 
aspiring worshippers may have defaced its portico. 



C329] 



MEMORIALS OF MRS. 
GRUNDY 

OF all the studies to which I was ever impelled in 
my youth, either by fear of the birch or by the 
hope of the laurel or the bays, mythology was per- 
haps the most charming. It was refreshing, after 
trying in vain to conjugate a verb, and being at last 
obliged to decline it— after adding up a column of 
figures several times, and getting many different re- 
sults, and none of them the right one — and after 
making a vain attempt to comprehend the only al- 
gebraic knowledge that ever was forced into my 
unmathematical brain, viz., that x equals an unknown 
quantity,— it was, I say, refreshing to turn over the 
leaves of my Classical Dictionary, and revel among 
the gods and heroes whose wondrous careers were 
embalmed in its well-thumbed pages. Lempriere 
was the great magician who summoned up before 
my delighted eyes the denizens of a sphere where 
existence was unvexed by any pestilent arithmetics, 
and where the slavery of the inky desk was unknown. 
It always seemed to me as if the knowledge that I 
gained out of those enchanted chronicles not only 
improved my mind, but made my body more robust ; 
for I joined in the chase, fought desperate battles, as 
the gods willed it, and breathed all the while the 
pure, invigorating air of old Olympus. The con- 

C330] 



MEMORIALS OF MRS. GRUNDY 

secrated groves were the dwelling-place of my mind, 
and I became for a time a sharer in the joys of beings 
in whom I believed with all the ardour and sim- 
plicity of childhood. I enjoyed my mythological 
readings all the more because they did not generally 
find favour with my school companions, most of 
whom vindicated their nationality by professing 
their affection for the Rule of Three. One of them, 
I remember, was especially severe on the uselessness 
of the studies in which I took pleasure. He, parens 
deorum cultor, etinfrequens, could get no satisfaction 
out of the books in which I revelled; if he had got to 
study or read, he could not afford to waste his brains 
over the foolish superstitions of three thousand years 
ago. He did not care how much romance and poetic 
beauty there might be in the ancient mythology: 
what did it all come to in the end? It didn't pay. 
It was a humbug. Our paths in life separated when 
we graduated from jackets and peg-tops. He re- 
mained faithful to his boyish instincts, and pursued 
the practical as if it were a reality. After a few 
years his face lost all its youthful look; an intense 
spirit of acquisitiveness gleamed in his calculating 
eye, and an interest table seemed to be written in the 
lines of his care-worn countenance. We seldom had 
any conversation in our after years, for he always 
seemed to be under some restraint, as if he feared 
that I wished to borrow a little money of him, and 
he did not wish to refuse for the sake of the old time 
when we sat at the same desk, although he knew that 
my note was good for nothing. His devotion to his 
deity, the practical, did not go unrewarded. He be- 
came like the only mythological personage whom he 

[331] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

would have envied, had he known any thing of the 
science he despised. His touch seemed to transmute 
every thing into gold. His speculations during the 
war of 1812 were all successful. Eastern lands 
harmed him not. The financial panic of 1837 only 
put money in his purse. He rolled up a large for- 
tune, and was happy. He looked anxious, but of 
course he was happy. What man ever devoted his 
life to the working out of the dreams of his youth 
in the acquisition of riches, and succeeded beyond his 
anticipations, without being very happy? But, if his 
gains were something practical and real, his losses 
were doubly so. Each one of them was as a dagger 
stuck into that sere heart. His only son gave him 
much trouble by his wild life, and, what touched him 
still more, wasted the money he had laboured to pile 
up, at the gaming tables of Baden. I saw him walk- 
ing down Tremont Street the other day, looking care- 
worn and miserable, and I longed to ask him what 
he thought of the real and practical after trying 
them. He would certainly have been willing to 
acknowledge that there is more reality in the romance 
and poetry of mythology than in the thousands which 
he invested in the Bay State Mills. His practical life 
has brought him vanity and vexation of spirit, while 
the old Lempriere, which he used to treat so con- 
temptuously, flourishes in immortal youth, unhurt 
amid the wreck of fortunes and the depreciation of 
stocks. 

But I am not writing an essay on mythology. I 
wish to treat of one who is sometimes considered a 
myth, but who is a living and breathing personality 
like all of us. This wide-spread scepticism is one of 

C332] 



MEMORIALS OF MRS. GRUNDY 

the most fatal signs of the times. Because the late 
Mrs. Sairey Gamp supposed herself justified in culti- 
vating a little domestic mythology in the shade of the 
famous Mrs. Harris, are we to take all the person- 
ages who have illustrated history as myths and 
unrealities? Shade of Herodotus, forbid it ! There 
are some unbelieving and irreverent enough to doubt 
whether there is really such a person as Mrs. Part- 
ington; other some there are so hardened in their 
incredulity as to question the existence of the indi- 
vidual who smote Mr. William Patterson, and even 
of the immortal recipient of the blow himself. 
Therefore we ought not to think it strange that the 
lady whose name adorns the title of this article 
should not have escaped the profane spirit of the 
age. 

Unfortunately for us, Mrs. Grundy is no myth, 
but a terrible reality. She is a widow. The late Mr. 
Grundy bore it with heroic patience as long as he 
could, and then, by a divine dispensation in which he 
gladly acquiesced, was relieved of the burden of life. 
If he be not happy now, the great doctrine of com- 
pensation is nought but a delusion and a sham. If 
endless happiness could only be attained through 
such a purgatory as poor Grundy's life, few of us, 
I fear, would yearn to be counted among the elect. 
Martyrs, and confessors, and saints of every degree 
have won their crowns of beatitude with comparative 
ease; if they had been subjected to a twenty years' 
novitiate with Mrs. Grundy and her tireless tongue, 
they would have found how much more terrible that 
was than the laborious life or cruel death by which 
they passed from earth, and fewer bulls of canoniza- 

£333 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

tion would have received the Seal of the Fisherman. 
I have heard from those who were acquainted with 
that estimable and uncomplaining man that he mar- 
ried for love. His wife was a person of considerable 
attractions, of an inquiring turn of mind, and of 
uncommon energy of character. In her care of his 
household there was nothing of which he might with 
reason complain. She kept a sharp look-out over all 
those matters in which the prudent housewife de- 
lights to show her skill ; her table was worthy to re- 
ceive regal legs beneath its shining mahogany and 
spotless cloth, and I have even heard that her hus- 
band never had occasion to curse mentally over the 
lack of a shirt-button. Yet was Giles Grundy, 
Esquire, one of the most miserable of men. Of what 
avail was it to him that his wife could preserve 
quinces, if she could not preserve her own peace of 
mind? What did it matter how well she cured hams, 
if she always failed so miserably in curing her 
tongue? What profit was it that her accounts with 
her butcher and grocer were always correctly kept, if 
her accounts of all her neighbours constantly over- 
ran and kept her and her spouse in a perpetual state 
of moral bankruptcy? What difference did it make 
how well she took care of her own family, if they 
were to be kept in an unending turmoil by her solici- 
tude concerning that of every body else? 

If you had visited Mrs. Grundy, and remarked 
the brightness of the door-knocker, the stair-rods, the 
andirons, and every other part of her premises that 
was susceptible of polish, and the scrupulous clean- 
liness that held absolute sway around her, you would 
have sworn that she was gifted with the hundred 

C3343 



MEMORIALS OF MRS. GRUNDY 

arms of Briareus: if you had listened for fifteen 
minutes to her observations of men and things, you 
would have had a conviction amounting to absolute 
certainty that she possessed the eyes of Argus. No- 
body ever doubted that she was a most religious 
person. She attended to all her religious duties with 
most edifying exactness. She was always in her seat 
at church, and could tell you, to a bonnet ribbon, the 
dress of every person who honoured the sacred edi- 
fice with his or her presence. If you would know 
who of the congregation were so lacking in fervour 
of spirit as to neglect to bow in the creed, or to com- 
mit the impropriety of nodding during the sermon, 
Mrs. Grundy could give you all the information you 
could wish. She carried out the divine precept to the 
letter: she watched as well as prayed. But her re- 
ligion did not waste itself in mere devotional ecstasy; 
it took the most attractive form of religion— that of 
active benevolence. And her pious philanthropy was 
not of that exclusively telescopic character that looks 
out for the interests of the Cannibal Islands and the 
king thereof, and cannot understand that there is 
any spiritual destitution nearer home. She sub- 
scribed, it is true, to support the missionaries with 
their wives and numerous children, who were de- 
voted to the godly work of converting the Chinese 
and the Juggernauts ; but she did something also in 
the way of food and flannel for the victims of want 
in her own neighbourhood. She established a sewing 
circle in the parish where she lived, and never ap- 
peared happier than when busily engaged with her 
female companions in their weekly task and talk. I 
am afraid that there was other sowing done in that 

H335 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

circle besides plain sewing. The seeds of domestic 
unhappiness and strife were carried from thence into 
all parts of the parish. Reputations as well as gar- 
ments took their turn among those benevolent ladies, 
and were cut out, and fitted, and basted, and sewed 
up, and overcast. The sewing circle was Mrs. 
Grundy's confessional. Do not misapprehend me — 
I would not asperse her character by accusing her of 
what are known at the present day as "Romanizing 
tendencies"; for she lived long before the "scarlet 
fever" invaded the University of Oxford and carried 
off its victims by hundreds; and nobody ever sus- 
pected her of any desire to tell her own offences in 
the ear of any human being. No, she detested the 
Roman confessional in a becoming manner; but she 
upheld, by word and example, that most scriptural 
institution, the sewing circle— the Protestant confes- 
sional, where each one confesses, not her own sins, 
but the sins of her neighbours. Mrs. Grundy's suc- 
cess with her favourite institution encouraged others 
to emulate her example ; and now sewing circles are 
common wherever the mother tongue of that benevo- 
lent lady is spoken. It must in justice be acknow- 
ledged that there are few institutions of human 
invention which have departed from the spirit of 
their original founder so little as the sewing circle. 

Yet, in spite of all her virtues as a housekeeper, a 
philanthropist, and a Christian, Mrs. Grundy had 
her enemies. Some people were uncharitable enough 
to say that she was the cause of more trouble than 
all the rest of the female population of the town. 
They accused her of setting herself up as a censor, 
and giving judgments founded upon hearsay testi- 

C3363 



MEMORIALS OF MRS. GRUNDY 

mony rather than sound legal evidence. They even 
said that she made her visits among the poor a cloak 
for the gratification of her inquisitiveness; and, if it 
is ever pardonable to judge of the motives of a fel- 
low-being, I think that, in consideration of their ex- 
asperation, they must be excused for making so 
unkind a charge, it seemed to be so well founded. 
Far be it from me to say that Mrs. Grundy ever wil- 
fully misrepresented. She would have shrunk in- 
stinctively from a falsehood. But she delighted to 
draw inferences ; and no fact or rumour ever came to 
her without being classified properly in her mental 
history of her neighbours, and being made to shed its 
full influence upon her next conversation. It is 
astonishing how much one pair of eyes and ears will 
do in the collection of information when a person is 
devoted to it in earnest. In her younger days, Mrs. 
Grundy had taken pleasure in watching her neigh- 
bours and keeping up a running commentary on their 
movements; as she advanced in life, it became her 
business. Her efforts in that way were rather in the 
style of an amateur up to the time of her marriage ; 
afterwards she adopted a professional air. She 
placed herself at her favourite window, ornamenting 
its seat with her spools, and though she stitched 
away with commendable industry, nothing escaped 
her that came within range of her keen powers of 
observation. 

If Mr. Brown called on Mrs. White over the 
way, Mrs. Grundy set it down as a remarkable occur- 
rence : if he repeated his visit a week later, she would 
not declare it positively scandalous, but it was evi- 
dent that her nicer sense of propriety was deeply 

C337] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

wounded: if he passed by the door without calling, it 
>was clear that there had been a falling out — that 
Mrs. White had seen the error of her ways, or that 
her husband had, and had given Brown a warning. 
If a stranger was seen exercising Jones's bell-pull on 
two consecutive days, this indefatigable woman al- 
lowed not her eyes to sleep nor her eyelids to slumber 
until she had satisfied herself concerning his name 
and purpose. If Mr. Thompson waited upon pretty 
Miss Jenkins home in a shower, and treated her 
kindly and politely, (and who could do otherwise 
with a young angel in blue and drab, who might 
charm a Kaffir or a Sepoy into urbanity?) Mrs. 
Grundy straightway instituted inquiries among all 
the neighbours as to whether it was true that they 
were engaged. After this fashion did Mrs. Grundy 
live. Her words have been known to blast a reputa- 
tion which under the sunshine of prosperity and the 
storms of misfortune had sustained itself with equal 
grace and honour. It was useless to bring up proofs 
of a life of integrity against her sentence or her 
knowing smile. There was no appeal from her 
decision. Not that she was uncharitable,— only it 
did seem as if she were rather more willing to believe 
evil of her neighbours than good; and she appeared 
slow to trust in the repentance of any one who had 
ever fallen into sin, especially if the person were of 
her own sex. I am not complaining of this peculiar- 
ity; we must be circumspect and strict, and mercy is 
a quality too rare and divine to be wasted on every 
trivial occasion. But I cannot help thinking that, if 
the penitent found it as hard to gain the absolving 
smile of that Power to which alone we are answer- 

[338] 



MEMORIALS OF MRS. GRUNDY 

able for our misdeeds as to reinstate himself in the 
good graces of Mrs. Grundy, how few of us could 
have any hope of the beatific vision ! 

Mrs. Grundy had great influence; she was re- 
spected and feared. People found that she would 
give her opinion ex cathedra, and that, however un- 
founded that opinion might be, there were those who 
would reecho it until common repetition gave it the 
force of truth; so they tried to conciliate her by 
graduating their actions according to what they sup- 
posed would be her judgment. When this was seen, 
she began to be envied by some who had once hated 
her, and her idiosyncrasies were made the study of 
many of her sex who longed to share her empire 
over the thoughts and actions of their fellow-crea- 
tures. Thus, by a sort of multiplex metempsychosis, 
were Mrs. Grundy's virtues perpetuated, and she 
was endowed with a species of omnipresence. In 
this country Mrs. Grundy is a power. She is the 
absolute sovereign of America. Her reign there is 
none to dispute. Our national motto ought to be, 
instead of E pluribus unum, "What will Mrs. Grundy 
say?" There is no class in our community over 
which she does not exercise more or less power. Our 
politicians, when they cease to regard their influence 
as a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder, act, 
not from any fixed principles, but with a single eye to 
the good will of Mrs. Grundy. If a man is buying a 
house, it is ten chances to one that Mrs. Grundy's 
opinion concerning gentility of situation will carry 
the day against cosiness and real comfort. If your 
wife or daughter goes to buy a dress, Mrs. Grundy's 
taste will be consulted in preference to the durability 

[339] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

of the fabric or the condition of your purse. Mrs. 
Grundy dictates to us how we shall furnish our 
houses, and prescribes to us our whole rule of life. 
Under her stern sway, multitudes are living beyond 
their means, and trying to avert the bankruptcy and 
unhappiness that inevitably await them. It is not 
merely in the management of temporal affairs that 
Mrs. Grundy makes her power felt. Her vigilance 
checks many a generous impulse, stands between the 
resolution to do justice and its execution, and is a 
fruitful source of hypocrisy. She presides over the 
pulpit; the power of wardens and vestrymen is swal- 
lowed up by her; and the minister who can dress up 
his weekly dish of moral commonplaces so as not to 
offend her discriminating taste deserves to retain his 
place, and merits the unanimous admiration of the 
whole sewing circle. She is to be found in courts of 
law, animating the opposing parties, and enjoying 
the contest; actions of slander are an agreeable rec- 
reation to her; petitions for divorce give her un- 
mixed joy. Like the fury, Alecto, so finely described 
by Virgil, Mrs. Grundy can arm brothers to deadly 
strife against each other, and stir up the happiest 
homes with infernal hatred; to her belong a thou- 
sand woful arts — Sibi nomina tnille, mille nocendi 
artes. Mrs. Grundy's philanthropy confines itself 
to no particular class ; it is universal. Nothing that 
relates to human kind is alien to her. There is noth- 
ing earthly so high that she does not aspire to control 
it, nor any thing too contemptible for her not to wish 
to know all about it. 

Mrs. Grundy is omnipresent. Go where you will, 
you cannot escape from her presence. She stands 

C34o] 



MEMORIALS OF MRS. GRUNDY 

guard unceasingly over your front door and back 
windows. Her watchful eye follows you whene'er 
you take your walks abroad. Your name is never 
mentioned that she is not by, and seriously inclined 
to hear aught that may increase her baleful stock of 
knowledge. It is all the same to her whether you 
have lived uprightly or viciously; beneath her Gor- 
gon glance all human actions are petrified alike. And 
if she does not succeed in sowing discord around your 
hearthstone, and in driving you to despair and self- 
murder, as she did poor Henry Herbert the other 
day, it will be because you are not cursed with his 
fiery sensitiveness, and not because she lacks the will 
to do it. 

There is but one way in which the Grundian yoke 
can be thrown off. We must treat her as the English 
wit treated an insignificant person who had insulted 
him; we must "let her alone severely.' , We pay a 
certain kind of allegiance to her if we take notice of 
her for the purpose of running counter to her no- 
tions. We must ignore her altogether. It is true, 
this requires a great deal of moral courage, particu- 
larly in a country where every body knows every 
body else's business ; but it is an easier task to acquire 
that courage than to submit patiently to Mrs. 
Grundy's dictation and interference. Who shall 
estimate the happiness of that millennial period 
when we shall cease to ask ourselves before our 
every action, "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" and 
shall begin in earnest to live up to the golden rule 
that counsels us to mind our own business? When 
that day comes, what a world this will be ! How 
will superficial morality and skin-deep propriety, 

[3413 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

envy and uncharitableness, be diminished! How 
will contentment, and mutual good will, and domes- 
tic peace be augmented! Think on these things, O 
beloved reader; mind your own business, and the day 
is not far distant when, for you at least, the iron 
sceptre of Dame Grundy shall be powerless, and the 
spell broken that held you in so humiliating a thral- 
dom. 



C342] 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

1IFE is what we make it. The same scenes wear 
j a very different appearance to an ingenuous 
youth "in the bright morning of his virtues, in the 
full spring blossom of his hopes," and to the disap- 
pointed wretch who gazes on them "with the eyes of 
sour misanthropy." The horse that was turned by 
his benevolent owner into a carpenter's shop, with a 
pair of green spectacles prefixed to his nose, and 
mistook the dry pine shavings for his legitimate 
fodder, was very much in the condition of a youth 
looking upon life and yielding to the natural enthu- 
siasm of his unwarped spirit. Like the noble brute, 
however, the young man is undeceived as soon as he 
tries to sustain himself with the vanities which look 
so tempting and nutritious. He may, like a Wolsey, 
a Charles V., or a Napoleon, attain to the heights of 
power before the delusive glasses drop off; but even 
though the moment be delayed until he lies gasping 
in the clutch of that monarch to whom the most ab- 
solute of sovereigns and the most radical of repub- 
licans alike must yield allegiance, it is sure to come, 
and show him the ashes that lay hid beneath the fair, 
ripe-looking rind of the fruit he climbed so high to 
obtain. Life passes before us like a vast panorama, 
day by day and year by year unrolling and disclosing 
new scenes to charm us into self-forgetfulness. At 
one time, we breathe the bracing air of the moun- 

C343 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

tains ; at another, our eyes are gladdened by the sight 
of sunshiny meadows, or of fertile and far-reaching 
prairies; and then the towered city, with its grove of 
masts and its busy wharves, makes all mere natural 
beauty seem insignificant in comparison with the 
enterprise and ambition of man; until, at last, the 
canvas is rolled away, the music ceases, the lights are 
put out, and we are left to realize that all in which 
we delighted was but an illusion and a "fleeting 
show." 

Nevertheless, in spite of the vanities that sur- 
round us, —in spite of the sublime world-sickness of 
Solomon and the Preacher, and the fierce satire of 
Juvenal, (who was as anxious to ascertain the precise 
weight of Hannibal as if that illustrious dux had 
been a prize-fighter,)— there is considerable reality 
in life. The existence of so much sham and make- 
believe implies the existence of the real and true. Sir 
Thomas Browne tells us that u in seventy or eighty 
years a man may have a deep gust of the world"; 
and it were indeed melancholy if any one with hair 
as gray as mine should look despairingly over the 
field of human existence and effort, and cry, "All is 
barren." 

Life, as I have before said, is whatever we choose 
to make it. Its true philosophy is that divine art 
which enables us to transmute its every moment into^ 
the pure gold of heroic and changeless immortality. 
Without that philosophy, it is impossible for the 
world not to seem at times as it did to the desponding 
Danish prince, "a sterile promontory," and a "foul 
and pestilent congregation of vapours." Without it, 
life is like an elaborate piece of embroidery, looked 

C3443 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

at from the wrong side ; we cannot but acknowledge 
the brilliancy of some of its threads, and the delicate 
texture of the work, but its lack of system, and of 
any appearance of utility, fatigues the mind that 
hungers after perfection, and tempts it to doubt the 
divine wisdom and goodness from which it origi- 
nated. With it, however, we gaze with admiration 
and awe upon the front of the same marvellous work. 
Our sense is no longer puzzled by any straggling 
threads, or loose ends ; the exquisite colours, the con- 
trast of light and shade, and the perfect symmetry 
and harmony of the design, fill the heart of the be- 
holder with wonder and delight, and draw him 
nearer to the source of those ineffable perfections 
which are but imperfectly symbolized in the marvels 
of the visible universe. 

The philosophy which can do all this is sincerity. 
"I think sincerity is better than grace," says Mr. T. 
Carlyle; and the Scotch savage is right. All the 
amenities of life that spring from any other source 
than a true heart, are but gratuitous hypocrisy. The 
kind-hearted knight whom I have already quoted 
showed how highly he esteemed this virtue when he 
said, "Swim smoothly in the stream of nature, and 
live but one man." This double existence, that most 
of us support,— that is, what we really are, and what 
we wish to be considered,— is the source of many of 
our faults, and most of our vexation and wretched- 
ness. He is the truly happy man who forgets that 
"appearances must be kept up," and remembers only 
that "ejich of us is as great as he appears in the sight 
of his Creator, and no greater." A great French 
philosopher has truly said, "How many controver- 
ts] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

sies would be terminated, if the disputants were ob- 
liged to speak out exactly what they thought !" And 
surely he might have gone farther in the same line of 
thought; for how much heartburning, domestic un- 
happiness, dishonesty, and shameful poverty might 
be prevented, if my neighbour Jinkins and his wife 
were content to pass in the world for what they are, 
instead of assuming a princely style of living that 
only makes their want of true refinement more ap- 
parent, and if Johnson and his wife could be induced 
not to imitate the vulgar follies of the Jinkinses! 
Believe me, incredulous reader, there is more wisdom 
in old Sir Thomas's exhortation to "live but one 
man" than appears at first sight. 

But to leave this great primary virtue, which pol- 
icy teaches most men to practise, though they love it 
not,— there are two or three principles of action 
which I have found very useful in my career, and 
which form a part of my philosophy of life. The 
first is, never to anticipate troubles. Many years 
ago, I was travelling in a part of our common coun- 
try not very thickly settled, and, coming to a place 
where two roads met, I applied, in my doubt as to 
which one I ought to take, to an old fellow (with a 
pair of shoulders like those of Hercules, and a face 
on which half a century of sunshine, and storm, and 
toddies had made an indelible record) who was re- 
pairing a rickety fence by the wayside. He scanned 
me with a look that seemed to take in not only my 
personal appearance, but the genealogy of my brave 
ancestor, who might have fallen in a duel if he had 
not learned how "to distinguish between the man and 
the act," and then directed me to turn to the left, as 

D463 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

that road saved some three or four miles of the dis- 
tance to the farm-house to which I was journeying. 
As it was spring-time, I manifested some anxiety to 
know whether the freshets, which had been having 
quite a run of business in some parts of the country, 
had done any damage to a bridge which I knew I 
must cross if I took the shorter road. He sneered at 
my forethought, and said he supposed that the bridge 
was all right, and that I had better "go ahead, and 
see." I was acting upon his advice, when a shout from 
his hoarse, nasal voice caused me to look back. "I 
say, young man," he bawled out to me, "never cross 
a bridge till you come to it!" There was wisdom in 
the old man's rough-spoken sentence— "solid chunks 
of wisdom," as Captain Ed'ard Cuttle would fain 
express it— and it sank deep into my memory. There 
are very few of us who have not a strong propensity 
to diminish our present strength by entertaining 
fears of future weakness. If we could content our- 
selves to "act in the living present,"— if we could 
keep these telescopic evils out of sight, and use all 
our energies in grappling with the difficulties that 
actually beset our path,— how much more we should 
achieve, and how greatly would our sum of happiness 
be increased ! 

Another most salutary principle in my philosophy 
is, never to allow myself to be frightened until I have 
examined and fairly established the necessity of such 
a humiliation. I adopted this principle in my child- 
hood, being led to it in the following manner: I was 
visiting my grandfather, who lived in a fine old man- 
sion-house in the country, with high wainscotings, 
capacious fireplaces, heavy beams in the ceilings, and 

C347] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

wide-arching elms overshadowing the snug porch 
where two or three generations had made love. 
Sixty years and more have elapsed since that happy 
time, yet it seems fresher in my memory than the 
events of only quarter of a century back. My grand- 
father was a lover of books, and possessed a good 
deal of general information. He thought it as ad- 
visable to keep up with the history of his own times 
as to be skilled in that of empires long since passed 
away. It is not to be wondered at that he should 
have treasured every newspaper— especially every 
foreign journal— that he could lay his hands upon. 
It was under his auspices that I first read the dread- 
ful story of the Reign of Terror, and acquired my 
anti-revolutionary principles. 

I shall never forget the bright autumnal afternoon 
when the mail coach from Boston brought a package 
of books and papers to my grandfather. It was the 
last friendly favour, in fact the last communication, 
that he ever received from his old Tory friend, Mr. 
Barmesyde, whom I mentioned with respect in a 
former essay; for that genial old gentleman died in 
London not long after. The parcel had made a 
quick transit for those days, Mr. Barmesyde's letter 
being dated only forty-six days before it was opened 
by my grandsire, and we enjoyed the strong fra- 
grance of its uncut contents together. The old gentle- 
man seized upon a copy of Burke's splendid Essay 
on the French Revolution, which the package con- 
tained, and left me to revel in the newspapers, which 
were full of the dreadful details of that bloody 
Saturnalia. I got leave from my grandfather (who 
was so deep in Burke that he answered me at ran- 

C348] 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

dom) to sit up an hour later than usual. Terrible as 
all the things of which I read seemed to my young 
mind, there was a fascination about the details of 
that sanguinary orgie that completely enchanted me. 
My imagination was full of horrible shapes when I 
was obliged to leave the warm, cheerful parlour, and 
Robespierre, Danton, and Marat were the infernal 
chamberlains that attended me as I went up the 
broad, creaking staircase unwillingly to bed. A fresh 
north-west breeze was blowing outside, and the sere 
woodbines and honeysuckles that filled the house 
with fragrance, and gave it such a rural look in sum- 
mer, startled me with their struggles to escape from 
bondage. Had it been spring, my young imagination 
was so excited that I should have feared that they 
might imitate the insurgents of whom I had been 
reading and begin to shoot ! In the night my troubled 
slumbers were disturbed by a noise that seemed to 
me louder than the discharge of a heavy cannon. I 
sat up in the high, old-fashioned bed, and glared 
around the room, which was somewhat lighted by the 
beams of the setting moon. There was no mistake 
about my personal identity— I was neither royalist 
nor jacobin; there was no doubt that I was in the best 
"spare chamber" of my grandfather's house, and 
not in the Bastile, and that the dark-looking thing in 
the corner was a solid mahogany chest of drawers, 
and not a guillotine ; but all these things only served 
to increase my terror when I noticed a dark form 
standing near the foot of the bed and staring at me 
with pale, fiery eyes. I rubbed my own eyes hard, 
and pinched myself severely, to make sure that I w^ 
awake. The room was as still a- v ~ ^reat & 

[349] 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

in the pyramid of Cheops. I could hear the old clock 
tick at the foot of the stairs as plainly as if I had 
been shut up in its capacious case. In the midst of 
my perturbation it made every fibre of my frame 
tremble by striking one with a solemn clangour that 
I thought must have waked every sleeper in the 
house. The stillness that followed was deeper and 
more terrifying than before. I heard distinctly the 
breathing of the monster at the foot of the bed. I 
tried to whistle at the immovable shape, but I had 
lost the power to pucker. At last, I formed a des- 
perate resolution. I knew that, if the being whose 
big, fierce eyes filled me with terror were a genuine 
supernatural fiend, it was all over with me, and I 
might as well give up at once. But, if perchance a 
human form were hid beneath that dreadful disguise, 
there was some room for hope of ultimate escape. 
To settle this point, therefore, became necessary to 
my peace of mind, and I determined that it should 
be done. Bending up "each corporal agent to the 
terrible feat," I slid quietly out of bed. The monster 
was as motionless as before, but I noticed that his 
head was covered with a white cloth, which made his 
head seem ghastlier than ever. Setting my teeth 
firmly together, and clinching my little fists to per- 
suade myself that I was not afraid, I made the last, 
decisive effort. I walked across the room, and stood 
face to face with that formidable shape. My grand- 
father's best coat hung there against the wall, its 
velvet collar protected from the dust by a white 
cloth, and the two gilt buttons on its back glittering 
in the moonlight. This was the tremendous presence 

C35o] 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

that had appalled me. The weakness in the knees, 
the chattering of my teeth, and the profuse perspira- 
tion which followed my recognition of that harmless 
garment, bore witness to the severity of my fright. 
Before I crawled back into the warm bed, I resolved 
never in future to yield to fear, until I had ascer- 
tained that there was no escape from it ; and I have 
had many occasions since to act upon that principle. 

Speaking of fear, a friend of mine has a favourite 
maxim, "Always do what you are afraid to do;" to 
which (in a limited sense, so far as it relates to 
bodily fear) I subscribed even in my boyhood. I 
was returning one evening to my grandfather's 
house, during one of my vacation visits, and yielded 
to the base sentiment of timidity so far as to choose 
the long way thither by the open road, rather than to 
take the short cut, through the graveyard and a little 
piece of woodland, which was the ordinary path in 
the daytime. I pursued my way, thinking of what I 
had done, until I got within sight of the old mansion 
and its guardian elms, when shame for my own cow- 
ardice compelled me to retrace my steps a quarter of 
a mile or more, and take the pathway I had so fool- 
ishly dreaded. The victory then achieved has lasted 
to this hour. Dead people and their habitations have 
not affrighted me since; indeed, some grave men 
whom I have met have excited my mirth rather than 
my fears. 

But overcome our fears and our propensity to 
borrow trouble, as we may,— in spite of all our 
philosophy, life is a severe task. I have heard of a 
worthy Connecticut parson of the old school, who 

C350 




MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

enlarged upon the goodness of that Providence 
which dealt out time to a man, divided into minutes, 
and hours, and days, and months, and years, instead 
of giving it to him, as it were, in a lump, or in so 
large a quantity that he could not conveniently use it ! 
Laugh as much as you please, gentle reader, at the 
seeming absurdity of the venerable divine, but do not 
neglect the great truth which inspired his thought. 
Do not forget what a great mercy it is that we are 
obliged to live but one day at a time. Do not over- 
look the loving kindness which softens the memory 
of past sorrows, and conceals from us those which 
are to come. I have no respect for that newest 
heresy of our age, which pretends to read the secrets 
of the unseen world, nor any sympathy with those 
morbid minds that yearn to tear away the veil which 
infinite wisdom and mercy hangs between us and the 
future. With all our boasted learning we know little 
enough ; but that little is far too much for our happi- 
ness. How many of our trials and afflictions could 
we have borne, if we had been able to foresee their 
full extent and to anticipate their combined poig- 
nancy? Truly we might say with Shakespeare,— 

"O, if this were seen, 
The happiest youth — viewing his progress through, 
What perils past, what crosses to ensue — 
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die." 

He only is the true philosopher who uses life as 
the usurer does his gold, and employs each shining 
hour so as to insure an ever-increasing rate of inter- 
est. He does not bury his gift, nor waste it in fri- 
volity. Like the old Doge of Venice, he grows old 

C352] 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

but does not wear out : Senescit, non segnescit. And 
he truly lives twice, as an old classical poet expresses 
it, inasmuch as he renews his enjoyment of the past 
in the recollection of his good actions and of pleas- 
ures "such as leave no sting behind." 



C353] 



BEHIND THE SCENES 

THERE is no pleasure so satisfactory as that 
which an old man feels in recalling the happi- 
ness of his youthful days. All the woes, and anxieties, 
and heart-burnings that disturbed him then have 
passed away, and left only sunshine in his memory. 
And this retrospective enjoyment increases with 
every repeated recital, until the scenes of his past 
history assume a magnificence of proportion that be- 
wilders the narrator himself, and sets the principles 
of optics entirely at defiance. It is with old men 
looking back on their younger days very much as it 
is with people who have travelled in Italy. How do 
the latter glow with enthusiasm at the mere mention 
of the "land of the melting lyre and conquering 
spear" ! How do their eyes glisten as they tell of the 
time when they mused among the broken columns of 
the Forum, or breathed the air of ancient consecra- 
tion under the majestic vaults of the old basilicas, or 
walked along the shores of the world's most beauti- 
ful bay, and watched the black form of Vesuvius 
striving in vain to tarnish with its foul breath the 
blue canopy above it! They have forgotten their 
squabbles with the vetturini, the draughtless chim- 
neys in their lodgings, and the dirty staircase that 
conducted to them; the fleas, with all the other dis- 
agreeable accompaniments of Italian life, have fled 
into oblivion ; and Italy lives in their memories only 

[3543 



BEHIND THE SCENES 

as a land of gorgeous sunsets, and of a history that 
dwarfs all other human annals. And so it is with an 
old man looking back upon his youth: he forgets 
how he cried over his arithmetic lessons ; how unfilial 
his feelings were when his governor refused him per- 
mission to set up a theatre in the cellar; how sheep- 
ishly he slunk through all the back alleys on the day 
when he first mounted a tail-coat and a hat; how 
unhappy he was when he saw his heart's idol, Mary 
Smith, walking home from school with his implacable 
foe, Brown; how his head used to ache after those 
nodes ccenaque deum with his club at the old Ex- 
change Coffee House ; and what a void was created 
in his heart when his crony of cronies was ordered off 
by a commission from the war department. There 
is no room in his crowded memory for such things as 
these. Sitting by his fireside, as I do now, he recalls 
his youth only as a season of bats and balls, and 
marbles, of sleds, and skates, and bright buttons, and 
clean ruffled collars, of Christmas cornucopias of 
hosiery, and no end of Artillery Elections and 
Fourths of July, with coppers enough to secure the 
potentiality of obtaining egg-pop to an alarming ex- 
tent. 

How he fires up if you mention the theatre to him ! 
He will allow that Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Warren are 
most excellent in their way; but bless your simple 
heart, what is the stage now compared to what it 
was in the first part of this century? And he is about 
right. It is useless for us, who remember the old 
Federal Street playhouse, and the triumphs of Cooke 
and the great Kean, to try to go to the theatre now. 
Our new theatre is more stately and splendid than 

[355 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

Old Drury was, but our players do not reach my 
youthful standard. I miss those old familiar faces 
and voices that delighted me in times long past, and 
the stage has lost most of its charms. I can find my 
best theatrical entertainment here at home. I call 
up from among the shadows that the flickering fire- 
light casts upon the wall, the tall, knightly figure of 
Duff, the brisk, busy, scolding Mrs. Barnes, the 
sedate and judicious Dickson, the grotesque Finn, 
the stately and elegant Mrs. Powell, looking like the 
personification of tragedy, and bluff old Kilner, fat 
and pleasant to the sight, and with that hearty laugh 
that made all who heard it love him. 

What is the excitement occasioned by the Ellsler 
or Miss Lind compared to that which attended the 
advent of the elder Kean? What crowds used to 
beset the box office in the ten-footer next to the the- 
atre, from the earliest dawn until the opening! I 
often think, when I meet some of our gravest and 
grayest citizens in their daily walks, what a figure 
they cut now compared with the days when they 
were fighting their way into the box office of the old 
theatre! Talk of enthusiasm! What are all our 
political campaigns and public commemorations 
compared with that evening during the last war with 
Great Britain, when Commodore Bainbridge came 
into Boston Bay after his victory over the Java! 
That admirable actor, the late Mr. Cooper, was 
playing Macbeth, and interrupted his performance 
to announce the victory. 

But, pardon me, I did not sit down here to lose 
myself in the reminiscences of half a century ago. 
Let me try to govern this truant pen, and keep it 

C3563 



BEHIND THE SCENES 

more closely to my chosen theme. Do you remem- 
ber, beloved reader, your second visit to the theatre? 
If you do, cherish it; let it not depart from you, for 
in the days that are in store for you, when age and 
infirmity shall stand guard over you, and you are 
obliged to find all your pleasures by your fireside, the 
memory of your second play will be very precious to 
you. You will find, on looking back to it through a 
vista of sixty years or more, that all the pleasure you 
then enjoyed was placed on the credit side of your 
account, and has been increasing by a sort of moral 
compound interest during the long years that you 
have devoted to delights less innocent, perhaps, and 
certainly less satisfactory, or to the pursuit of ob- 
jects far more fleeting and unreal than those which 
then fascinated your youthful mind. I say your 
"second play," for the first dramatic performance 
that the child witnesses is too astonishing to afford 
him its full measure of gratification. It is only after 
he has told his playmates all about it, and imitated 
the wonderful hero who rescued the beautiful lady 
in white satin, and dreamed of the splendour of the 
last great scene, when all the persons of the drama 
stood in a semicircle, and the king, with a crown of 
solid gold upon his head, addressed to the magnani- 
mous hero the thrilling words,— 

"It is enough: the princess is thine own!" — 

and all the characters struck impressive attitudes, 
and the curtain descended upon a tableau lighted up 
by coloured fires of ineffable brilliancy,— it is only 
after all these things have sunk deep into the young 
mind, and he has resolved to write a play himself, 

C3573 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

and never to rest satisfied until he can bring down the 
house with the best of the actors he has seen, that 
he fully appreciates the entertainment which has 
been vouchsafed to him. 

What a charm invests the place where we made 
our first acquaintance with the drama ! It becomes 
an enchanted spot for us, and I doubt if the greatest 
possible familiarity in after life can ever breed con- 
tempt for it in our hearts. For my own part, I 
regarded the destruction of the old theatre in Fed- 
eral Street, and the erection of warehouses on its 
hallowed site, as a positive sacrilege. And I cannot 
pass that spot, even at this late day, without mentally 
recurring to the joys I once tasted there. Perhaps 
some who read this may cherish similar sentiments 
about the old Tremont Theatre, a place for which I 
had as great a fondness as one can have for a theatre 
in which he did not see his first play. The very men- 
tion of it calls up its beautiful interior in my mind's 
eye,— its graceful proscenium, its chandeliers around 
the front of the boxes, its comfortable pit, where I 
enjoyed so much good acting, and all the host of 
worthies who graced that spacious stage. Mr. Gil- 
bert was not so fat in those days as he is now, nor 
Mr. Barry so gray. What a picturesque hero was 
old Brough in the time when the Woods were in their 
golden prime, and the appearance of the Count 
Rodolpho on the distant bridge was the signal for a 
tempest of applause! Who can forget how Mr. 
Ostinelli's bald head used to shine, as he presided 
over that excellent orchestra, or how funny old 
Gear's serious face looked, as he peered at the house 
through those heavy, silver-bowed spectacles? Per- 

C3S83 



BEHIND THE SCENES 

haps for some of my younger readers the stage of 
the Museum possesses similar charms, and they will 
find themselves, years hence, looking back to the 
happy times when Mr. Angier received their glitter- 
ing quarters, and they hastened up stairs, to forget 
the wanderings of iEneas and the perplexities of 
arithmetic in the inimitable fun of that prince-regent 
among comedians, Mr. William Warren. 

But wherever we may have commenced our dra- 
matic experience, and whatever that experience may 
have been, we have all, I am sure, felt the influence 
of that mysterious charm which hangs over the stage. 
We have all felt that keen curiosity to penetrate to 
the source of so much enjoyment. Who has not had 
a desire to enter that mysterious door which conducts 
the u sons of harmony" from the orchestra to the 
unknown depths below the stage ? It looks dark and 
forbidding, but we feel instinctively that it is not so, 
when we see our venerated uncle Tom Comer carry- 
ing his honest and sunshiny face through it so often. 
That green curtain, which is the only veil between 
us and a world of heroes and demigods, — how en- 
viously do we look at its dusty folds! With what 
curiosity do we inspect the shoes of varied make and 
colour that figure in the little space between it and 
the stage ! How do we long to follow the hero who 
has strutted his hour upon the stage into the invisible 
recesses of P. S. and O. P., and to know what takes 
the place of the full audience and the glittering row 
of footlights in his eyes when he makes his exit at the 
"upper entrance, left," or through the "door in flat" 
which always moves so noiselessly on its hinges ! I 
think that the performance of the "Forty Thieves" 

t359l 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

awakened this curiosity in my mind more than almost 
any other play. I longed to inspect more closely 
those noble steeds that came with such a jerky gait 
over the distant mountains, and to know what pro- 
duced the fearful noise that attended the opening of 
the robbers' cave. I believed in the untold wealth 
that was said to be heaped up in those subterranean 
depths, but still I wished to look at the "cavern gob- 
let," and see how it compared with those that 
adorned the cases of my excellent friends, Messrs. 
Davis and Brown. I can never forget the thrill that 
shot through me when Morgiana lifted the cover of 
the oil jar, and the terrible question, u Is it time?" 
issued from it, nor my admiration for the fearless- 
ness of that self-possessed maiden when she an- 
swered with those eloquent and memorable words, 
"Not yet, but presently." I believed that the com- 
pound which Morgiana administered so freely to the 
concealed banditti was just as certain death to every 
mother's son of them as M. Fousel's Pabulum Vita 
is renewed life to the consumptives of the present 
day; and, years after I had supposed my recollec- 
tions of the "Forty Thieves" to have become very 
misty and shapeless, I found myself startled in an 
oriental city by coming upon several oil jars of the 
orthodox model, and I astonished the malignant and 
turbaned Turk who owned them, and amused the 
companion of my walks about Smyrna, by lifting the 
lid of one of them, and quoting the words of Mor- 
giana. My superstitions concerning that pleasant 
old melodrama of course passed away when I be- 
came familiar with the theatre by daylight, and 
was accustomed to exchange the compliments of 
the morning with the estimable gentleman who 

C360] 



BEHIND THE SCENES 

played Hassarac; but the illusion of its first per- 
formance has never been entirely blotted from 
my mind. 

Some years ago it was my privilege to visit a place 
which is classical to every lover of the drama and its 
literature. Drury Lane Theatre, now that its an- 
cient rival, Covent Garden, has passed away, and 
been replaced by a house exclusively devoted to the 
lyric rnuse^ is the only theatre of London which is 
associated in every mind with that host of geniuses 
who have illustrated dramatic art from the times of 
Garrick to our own. That gifted and versatile actor, 
Mr. Davenport, who stands as high in the favour of 
the English as of the American public, conducted me 
through that immense establishment. We entered 
the door, which I had often looked at with curiosity 
as I passed through the long colonnade of the the- 
atre, encountering several of those clean-shaven per- 
sonages in clothes that would be much refreshed if 
they were allowed to take a nap, and, after travers- 
ing two or three dark corridors, found ourselves 
upon the stage. The scene of so many triumphs as 
have there been achieved is not without its attrac- 
tions, even though it may look differently en desha- 
bille from what it does in the glitter of gaslight. 
The stage which has been trod by the Kembles, the 
Keans, Siddons, Macready, Young, Palmer Dowton, 
Elliston, Munden, Liston, and Farren, is by no 
means an ordinary combination of planks. We 
know, for Campbell has told us, that 

" by the mighty actor brought, 

Illusion's perfect triumphs come ; 
Verse ceases to be airy thought, 
And sculpture to be dumb." 

C36i3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

Yet what a shadowy, intangible thing the reputation 
of a great actor would seem to be ! We simply know 
of him that in certain characters his genius held the 
crowded theatre in willing thraldom, and made the 
hearts of hundreds of spectators throb like that of 
one man. Those who felt his wondrous power have 
passed away like himself; and all that remains of 
him who once filled so large a space in the public eye 
is an ill-written biography or a few hastily penned 
sentences in an encyclopaedia. 

I was too full of wonder at the extent of that vast 
stage, however, to think much of its ancient associa- 
tions. Those lumbering stacks of scenery that filled 
a large building at the rear of the stage, and ran over 
into every available corner, told the story of the 
scenic efforts of Old Drury during nearly half a cen- 
tury. How many dramas, produced "without the 
slightest regard to expense," and "on a scale of un- 
paralleled splendour," must have contributed to the 
building up of those mighty piles ! The labyrinthine 
passages, the rough brick walls, darkened by time 
and the un-Penelope-like spiders of Drury Lane, 
were in striking contrast to the stage of that theatre 
as it appears from the auditorium. The green-room 
had been placed in mourning for the "goodlie com- 
panie" that once filled it, by the all-pervading, omni- 
present smoke of London. Up stairs the sight was 
still more wonderful. The space above the stage 
was crowded full of draperies, and borders, and 
dusty ropes, and wheels, and pulleys. Davenport 
enjoyed my amazement, and led me through a dark- 
some, foot-wide passage above the stage, through 
that wilderness of cordage to the machinists' gallery. 

D62 3 



BEHIND THE SCENES 

Take all the rope-walks that you have ever visited, 
dear reader, and add to them the running gear of 
several first-class ships, and you may obtain some- 
thing of an idea of the sight that then met my view. 
I have often heard an impatient audience hiss at 
some trifling delay in the shifting of a scene. If they 
could see the complicated machinery which must be 
set in motion to produce the effects they desire, their 
impatience would be changed to wonder at the skill 
and care which are so constantly exerted and make 
so few mistakes. A glance into two or three of the 
dressing-rooms, and a hasty visit to the dark maze of 
machinery beneath the stage for working the trap- 
doors, completed my survey of Old Drury, and I left 
its ancient walls with an increased respect for them, 
and a feeling of self-gratulation that I was neither 
an actor nor a manager. 

Not long after the above visit, I availed myself of 
an opportunity to make a similar inspection of the 
Theatre Francais, in the Palais Royal at Paris. The 
old establishment is not so extensive as that of Drury 
Lane, but its main features are the same. There 
was an air of government patronage about it which 
was apparent in its every department. The stage 
entrance was through a long and well-lighted corri- 
dor that might have led to a banking-house. Its 
green-room was a luxurious saloon, with a floor of 
tessellated walnut and oak, waxed and polished so 
highly that you could see your figure in it, and could 
with difficulty avoid becoming a lay figure upon it. 
Its frescoed ceiling and gilded cornices, its immense 
mirrors, and its walls covered with the portraits of 
several generations of players, whose genius has 

C363 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

made the very name of that theatre venerable 
throughout the civilized world, were very different 
from most of the green-rooms that I had seen. In 
the ancient colleges in Italy the walls of the class- 
rooms are hung with portraits of the distinguished 
scholars, illustrious prelates, and sometimes of the 
canonized saints, who once studied under their time- 
honoured roofs. In the same spirit, the green-room 
of the Theatre Franqais is adorned with busts and 
pictures ; and the chairs that once were occupied by a 
Talma, a Mars, and a Rachel are held in honour in 
the place where their genius received its full develop- 
ment. The dressing-rooms of the brilliant company 
which sustains the high reputation of that house are 
in perfect keeping with its green-room. Each of the 
leading actors and actresses has a double room, fur- 
nished in a style of comfortable elegance. In the 
wardrobe and property rooms, the imperial patron- 
age is visible in the richness of the stage furniture 
and the profusion of dresses made of the costliest 
silks and velvets. The stage, however, is very much 
like that of any other theatre. There were the same 
obscure passages, the same stupendous collection of 
intricate machinery, and the same mysterious odour, 
as of gas and musty scenery, pervaded the whole. I 
was permitted to view all its arcana, from the wheels 
that revolve in dusty silence eighty or ninety feet 
above the stage to the ponderous balance weights 
that dwell in the darkness of the second and third 
stories below it; and enjoyed it so keenly that I re- 
gretted to be told that I had seen all, and to find my- 
self once more in the dazzling sunshine of the Rue 
de Richelieu. 

C3643 



BEHIND THE SCENES 

We are accustomed to speak of the theatre as a 
repository of shams and unrealities, and to contrast 
it with the actualities of every-day life. I hope that 
you will excuse me, gentle reader, for venturing to 
deny the justice of all such figures of speech. They 
are as false as that common use of the expressions 
"sunrise" and "sunset," when we know that the sun 
does not really rise or set at all. No, it is the theatre 
that is the reality, and the life we see on every side 
the sham. The theatre is all that it pretends to be— 
a scenic illusion; and if we compare it to the world 
around us, with its loving couples, my-dearing each 
other before folks, and exchanging angry words over 
the solitary tea-tray, — its politicians, seeking nomina- 
tions and votes, and then reluctantly giving up their 
private interests and comforts for the "public good," 
(as the spoils of office are facetiously termed,)— its 
so-called ministers of the gospel, who speak of an 
offer of increased salary as "an opportunity to labour 
in a wider sphere of usefulness,"— and its funerals, 
where there is such an imposing show of black crape 
and bombazine, but where the genuine mourning 
commences only after the reading of the will of the 
deceased,— I am sure that we shall be justified in 
concluding that the fictitious affair which we try to 
dignify with the title of "real life" is a far less re- 
spectable illusion than the mimic scene that capti- 
vates us in the hours of relaxation. 



[365 3 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF CANT 

BE not dismayed, kind reader,— I have no inten- 
tion of impressing you for a tiresome cruise in 
the high and dangerous latitudes of German meta- 
physics ; nor do I wish to set myself up as a critic of 
pure reason. In spite of Noah Webster and his in- 
quisitorial publishers, I still cherish a partiality for 
correct orthography; and I would not be understood 
as referring in the caption of this article to the cele- 
brated founder of the transcendental school of 
philosophy. I cannot but respect Emmanuel Kant as 
a remarkable intellectual man; and I hope to be par- 
doned for saying that his surname might properly be 
anglicized, by spelling it with a C instead of a K. 
Neither did I allude to the useful art of saying "No" 
opportunely, which an excellent friend of mine 
(whose numerous virtues are neutralized by his pro- 
pensity to fabricate puns in season and out of season) 
insists upon denominating the "philosophy of can't." 
That faculty which is, in more senses than one, a 
negative virtue, is unhappily a much harder thing to 
find than the vice of which I have a few words to say. 
I do not mean cant in the worse sense of the word, 
as exemplified in the characters of Pecksniff, Stiggins, 
Chadband, and Aminadab Sleek, nor even in those 
of that large school of worshippers of propriety and 
bond-servants of popular opinion, who reverse the 
crowning glory of the character of Porcius Cato, and 

E366] 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF CANT 
prefer to seem, rather than to be, good. The cant I 
allude to is the technical phraseology of the various 
virtues, which some people appear to think is the 
same thing as virtue itself. They do not remember 
that a greasy bank-note is valueless save as the repre- 
sentative of a given quantity of bullion, and that pious 
and virtuous language is of no account except its tull 
value be found in the pure gold of virtue stored away 
in the treasure-chambers of the heart. For such cant 
as this I have less respect than for downright hypoc- 
risy; for there is something positive about the char- 
acter of your genuine villain, which certainly does 
not repel me so strongly as the milk-and-watery 
characteristics of that numerous class of every-day 
people who (not being good enough to serve as ex- 
amples, nor bad enough to be held up as warnings) 
are of no use whatever in their day and generation 
What possible solace can he who deals in the set 
phrases of consolation administer to the afflicted 
spirit in that hour, when (even among the closest 
friends) "speech is silver, but silence is golden t 

There is scarcely a subject upon which men con- 
verse, in which this species of cant does not play its 
part; but there are some matters in which it makes 
itself so conspicuous that I cannot resist the tempta- 
tion to pay particular attention to them. And, as the 
subject is rather an extensive one, I will parley no 
longer in its vestibule, but pull off my overcoat, and 
make myself at home in its front parlour. I wish to 
make a few observations on cant as it manifests itselt 
in regard to morality, philanthropy, religion, liberty, 
and progress. My notions will excite the sneers ot 
some of my younger readers, I doubt not, and per- 
il 367 1 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

chance of some older ones; but, while I claim the 
privilege of age in speaking out my mind, I shall try 
to avoid the testiness which senility too often mani- 
fests towards those who do not respect its opinions. 
Convinced that mine are true, I can afford to emulate 
"Messire de Mauprat" in his patience, and wait to 
see my fellow-men pass their fortieth birthday, and, 
leaving their folly and enthusiasm behind them, come 
round to my position. 

The cant of Morality is so common that it is mis- 
taken by many excellent people for morality itself. 
To leave unnoticed the people who consider it very 
iniquitous to go to the theatre, but perfectly allow- 
able to laugh at Mr. Warren on the stage of the 
Museum; who enjoy backgammon, but shrink from 
whist with holy horror; and who hold up their hands 
and cry out against the innocent Sunday recreations 
of continental Europe, yet think themselves justified 
in reading their Sunday newspapers and the popular 
magazines, or talking of the style of the new bonnets 
which made their first appearance at the morning 
service, — to say nothing about the moralists of this 
school, I am afraid that the prevailing notions on 
matters of greater import than mere amusement are 
not such as would stand a very severe moral test. 
When I see so much circumspection with regard to 
external propriety, joined with such an evident want 
of principle, it seems to me as if the Ten Command- 
ments of the Old Law had been superseded by an 
eleventh: Thou shall not be found out. When I see 
people of education in a city like Boston, dignifying 
lust under the title of a spiritual affinity, and char- 
acterizing divorce as obedience to the highest natural 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF CANT 
law, -and still more, when I see how little surprise 
the enunciation of such doctrines occasions,— I no 
longer wonder at infidelity, for I am myself tempted 
to ask whether there is any such thing as abstract 
right or abstract wrong, and to question whether 
morality may not be an antiquated institution, which 
humanity is now sufficiently advanced to dispense 
with. It is a blessed thing that we have not the 
power to read one another's hearts. To pass by the 
' unhappiness it would cause us, what changes it would 
occasion in our moral classifications! How many 
men, clad in picturesque and variegated costumes, 
are labouring in the public workshops of Charles- 
town, or Sing Sing, or Pentonville, who, if the heart 
were seen, would be found worthier by far than some 
of those ornaments of society who are always at the 
head of their pews, and whose names are found 
alike on false invoices and subscription lists for evan- 
gelizing some undiscovered continent ! What a dif- 
ferent balance would be struck between so-called 
respectability in its costly silks and its comparative 
immunity from actual temptation, and needy wanton- 
ness displaying its rouge and Attleborough jewelry 
all the more boldly because it feels that the ban of 
society is upon it ! 

And this brings me to the cant of Philanthropy. 
That excellent word has been so shamefully abused 
of late years, by being applied to the empirical 
schemes of adventurers and social disorganizers, that 
you cannot now say a much worse thing of a man 
than that he is a "philanthropist." That term ought 
to designate one of the noblest representatives of the 
unselfish side of human nature; but to my mind, it 

£369 3 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

describes a sallow, long-haired, whining fellow, who 
has taken up with the profession of loving all men in 
general, that he may better enjoy the satisfaction of 
hating all men in particular, and may the more effec- 
tually prey upon his immediate neighbours; a mono- 
maniac, yet with sufficient "method in his madness" 
to make it pay a handsome profit; a knave whose 
telescopic vision magnifies the spiritual destitution of 
Tching-tou, and can see nothing wanting to complete 
our Christian civilization but a willingness to con- 
tribute to the "great and good work," and whose 
commissions for disbursing the funds are frightfully 
disproportionate to the amount collected and the 
work done. But there is a great deal of the cant of 
philanthropy passing current even among those who 
have no respect for the professional philanthropist. 
With all possible regard for the spirit of the age, I 
do not believe that modern philanthropy can ever be 
made to take the place of old-fashioned Christian 
charity. Far be it from me to underrate the benevo- 
lent efforts which are made in this community; but I 
cannot help seeing that while thousands are spent in 
alms, we lack that blessed spirit of charity which im- 
parted such a charm to the benevolent institutions of 
the middle ages. They seemed to labour among the 
poor on the principle which Sir Thomas Browne laid 
down for his charities — "I give no alms to satisfy the 
hunger of my brother, but to fulfil and accomplish 
the will and command of my God; I draw not my 
purse for his sake that demands it, but His that en- 
joined it." We irreverent moderns have tried to 
improve upon this, and the result is seen in legal en- 
actments against mendicancy, in palatial prisons for 

£370*1 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF CANT 

criminals, and in poorhouses where the needy are 
obliged to associate with the vicious and depraved. 
The "dark ages" (as the times which witnessed the 
foundation of the greatest universities, hospitals, and 
asylums the world ever saw, are sometimes called) 
were not dark enough for that. 

Do what we may to remedy this defect in our 
solicitude for the suffering classes, the legal view of 
the matter will still predominate. We may imitate 
the kindliness of the ancient times, but we cannot 
disguise the fact that pauperism is regarded not only 
as a great social evil, but as an offence against our 
laws. While this is so, we shall labour in vain to 
catch the tone of the days when poverty was en- 
nobled by the virtues of the apostolic Francis of 
Assisi and the heroic souls that relinquished wealth 
and power to share his humble lot. The voice of our 
philanthropy may be the voice of Jacob, but the hand 
will be the hand of Esau. That true gentleman and 
kind-hearted knight whom I have already quoted, 
had no patience with this contempt for poverty which 
was just growing into sight in his time, but is now so 
common; and he administered to it a rebuke which 
has lost none of its force by the lapse of more than 
two hundred years : "Statists that labour to contrive 
a commonwealth without poverty, take away the ob- 
ject of charity, not understanding only the common- 
wealth of a Christian, but forgetting the prophecy 
of Christ." 

In making any allusion to religious cant, I am sen- 
sible that I tread on very dangerous ground. Still, 
in an essay on such a subject as the present, revival- 
ism ought not to go unnoticed. God forbid that a 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

man at my time of life should pen a light word 
against any thing that may draw men from their 
worldliness to a more intimate union with their Cre- 
ator. But the revival extravagances which last year 
made the profane laugh and the devout grieve, merit 
the deprecation of every person who does not wish 
to see religion itself brought into contempt. I do not 
believe in the application of the high-pressure system 
to the spiritual life. Some persons seem to regard a 
religious excitement as an evidence of a healthy 
spiritual state. As well might they consider a fever 
induced by previous irregularity to be a proof of 
returning bodily health. As the physician of the 
body would endeavour to restore the patient to his 
normal state, so too the true physician of the soul 
would labour to banish the religious fever from the 
mind of his patient, and to plant therein the sure 
principles of spiritual health— a clearly-defined dog- 
matic belief, and a deep conviction of the sinfulness 
of sin. We all need to be from time to time re- 
minded that true religion is not a mere effervescence, 
not a vain blaze, but a reality which reflects some- 
thing of the unchangeable glory of its divine Author. 
It is not a volcano, treasuring within its bosom a 
fierce, destructive element, sullenly smouldering and 
smoking for years, and making intermittent exhibi- 
tions of a power as terrible as it is sublime. No ; it is 
rather a majestic and deep-flowing river, taking its 
rise amid lofty mountains whose snowy crags and 
peaks are pure from the defilement of our lower 
world, fed from heaven, bearing in its broad current 
beauty, and fertility, and refreshment, to regions 
which would else be sterile and joyless, and emptying 
at last into a shoreless and untroubled sea, whose 

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF CANT 

bright surface mirrors eternally the splendour of the 
skies. 

That the cant of Liberty should be popular with 
the American tongue is not, perhaps, to be wondered 
at. A young nation,— which has achieved its own 
independence in a contest with one of the most pow- 
erful governments in the world, — which has grown 
in territory, population, and wealth beyond all his- 
torical precedent,— and which has a new country for 
its field of action, so that its progress is unimpeded 
by the relics of ancient civilization or the ruins of 
dead empires, — could not reasonably be expected to 
resist all temptations to self-glorification. The 
American eagle is no mere barnyard fowl— content 
with a secure roost and what may be picked up within 
sight of the same. He is the most insatiable of birds. 
His fierce eye and bending beak look covetous, and 
his whole aspect is one of angry anxiety lest his prey 
should be snatched from him, or his dominion should 
be called in question. In this regard he differs greatly 
from his French relative, who squats with such a 
conscious air of superiority on the tops of the regi- 
mental standard-poles of the imperial army, and sur- 
veys the forest of bayonets in which he makes his nest 
as if he felt that his power was undisputed. And 
we Americans are not less uneasy and wild than the 
bird we have chosen for our national emblem, and 
appear to think that the essential part of liberty con- 
sists in keeping up an endless talk about it. Our 
cant of freedom needs to be reminded of Tom 
Hood's observation concerning religious cant: — 

"'Tis not so plain as the old hill of Howth, 
A man has got his bellyful of meat, 
Because he talks with victuals in his mouth!" 

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MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

With all our howling about liberty, we Americans 
are abject slaves to a theory of government which 
we feel bound to defend under all circumstances, and 
to propagate even in countries which are entirely 
unfitted for it. This constitutional theory is a fine 
thing to talk about ; few topics afford so wide a range 
to the imaginative powers of a young orator. It is 
not therefore to be wondered at, that the subject 
should be so often forced upon us, and that so many 
startling contrasts should be drawn between our gov- 
ernmental experiment and the thousand-years-old 
monarchies of Europe. These comparisons (which 
some people who make republicanism such an article 
of faith, that they must find it hard to repeat the 
clause of the Lord's prayer, "Thy kingdom come," 
— are so fond of drawing) remind me of the question 
that was discussed in the Milesian debating society 
—"Which was the greatest man, St. Patrick or the 
Fourth of July?" and the conclusions drawn from 
them are very like the result of that momentous 
debate, which was decided in the affirmative. 

For my own part, I have got past the age when 
eloquence and poetry are of much account in matters 
of such vital importance as government. When I 
buy a pair of overshoes, my first object is to get some- 
thing that is water-proof. So, too, in the matter of 
government, I only wish to know whether the pur- 
poses for which government is instituted— the pro- 
tection of the life, property, and personal liberty of 
its subjects — are answered; and, if they are, I am 
ready to swear allegiance to it, not caring a splinter 
of a ballot-box whether it be founded on hereditary 
succession or a roll of parchment, or whether its 

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF CANT 

executive authority be vested in a president, a king, 
or an emperor. That is the best government which 
is best administered; it makes little difference what 
you call it, or on what theory it is built. I love my 
country dearly, and yield to no one in my loyalty to 
her government and laws; but (pardon me for being 
so matter-of-fact, and seemingly unpatriotic) I would 
willingly part with some of this boasted liberty of 
ours, to secure a little more wisdom in making laws, 
and a good deal more strength in executing them. I 
count the privilege of talking politics and of choosing 
between the various political adventurers who aspire 
to be my rulers, as a very insignificant affair com- 
pared with a sense of security against popular vio- 
lence and the dishonesty of dealers in the necessaries 
of life. And I cannot help thinking, that for the 
inhabitants of a country where there is little rev- 
erence for authority or willing obedience to law, 
where the better class of the citizens refuse to take 
any part in politics, and where the legislative power 
is enthroned, not in the Senate, nor in the House of 
Representatives, but in the Lobby, — for the inhabi- 
tants of such a country to boast of their liberty 
aloud, is the most absurd of all the cants in this cant- 
ing world. 

Little as I respect the cant of liberty, I care even 
less for the cant of Progress. I never had much pa- 
tience with this worship of the natural sciences, which 
is rapidly getting to be almost the only religion 
among certain cultivated people in this quarter. I 
remember in my boyhood startling by my scientific 
apathy a precocious companion who used to bother 
his brains about the solar system, and one useless 

C3753 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

ology and another, in the precious hours which ought 
to have been devoted to Robinson Crusoe and the 
Arabian Nights' Entertainments. He had been 
labouring hard to explain to me the law of gravita- 
tion, and concluded with the bold statement that, 
were it not for that law, an apple, with which he had 
been illustrating his theory, instead of falling to the 
earth, might roll off the unprotected side of this sub- 
lunary sphere into the abyss of space,— or something 
to that effect. He could not conceal his contempt for 
my want of scientific ardour, when I asked him 
whether he should really care if it did roll off, so long 
as there was a plenty left ! I did wrong to joke him, 
for he was a good fellow, in spite of his weakness. 
It is many years since he figured himself out of this 
unsatisfactory world, into a state of existence where 
vision is clearer even than mathematical demonstra- 
tion, and where x does not "equal the unknown quan- 
tity." 

Pardon this digression: in complaining of the 
vaunted progress of this rapid age, I am making little 
progress myself. It appears to me that the people 
who laud this age so highly either do not know what 
true progress is, or suffer themselves to mistake the 
means for the end. Your cotton mills, and steam en- 
gines, and clipper ships, and electric telegraphs, do 
not constitute progress; they are means by which it 
may be attained. If gunpowder, immediately after 
its invention, had been devoted to the indiscriminate 
destruction of mankind, could such an invention have 
justly been termed progress? If the press were used 
only to perpetuate the blasphemies and indecencies 
of Mazzini and Eugene Sue, who would esteem 

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H 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF CANT 

Gutenberg and Fust as benefactors, or promoters of 
true progress? And if the increased facilities for 
travel, and the other inventions on which this age 
prides itself, only tend to make men's minds nar- 
rower by absorbing them in material interests, and 
their souls more mean by giving them the idol of 
prosperity to worship, then is this nineteenth century 
a century of progress indeed, but in the wrong direc- 
tion. And if our mode of education only augments 
the ratio of crime among the lower class, and makes 
superficial pretenders of the higher orders of society, 
it is not a matter which will justify our setting our- 
selves quite so high above past ages and the rest of 
the world. 

I cannot see what need nor what excuse there is for 
all this bragging. A great many strong men lived 
before Agamemnon,— and after him. We indeed do 
some things that would astonish our forefathers; but 
how are we superior to them on that account? We 
enslave the lightnings of heaven to be our messen- 
gers, and compel the sun to take our portraits; but if 
our electric wires are prostituted to the chicanery of 
trade or politics, and the faces which the sun por- 
trays are expressive of nothing nobler than mercan- 
tile shrewdness and the price of cotton, the less we 
boast of our achievements, the better. Thucydides 
never had his works puffed in a newspaper, Virgil 
and Horace never poetized or lectured for a lyceum; 
Charlemagne never saw a locomotive, nor did St. 
Thomas Aquinas ever use a friction match. Yet this 
unexampled age possesses, I apprehend, few his- 
torians who would not shrink from being compared 
with the famous Greek annalist, few poets worthy 

C3773 



MY UNKNOWN CHUM 

to wear the crowns of the friends of the great Augus- 
tus, few rulers more sagacious and firm than the first 
Emperor of the West, and few scholars who would 
not consider it a privilege to be taught by the 
Angelic Doctor. 

True progress is something superior to your puff- 
ing engines and clicking telegraphs, and independent 
of them. It is the advancement of humanity in the 
knowledge of its frailty and dependence; the eleva- 
tion of the mind above its own limited acquirements, 
to the infinite source of knowledge; the cleansing of 
the heart of its selfishness and uncleanness; in fact, 
it is any thing whatever that tends to assimilate man 
more closely to the divine Exemplar of perfect man- 
hood. 

THE END. 



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